Even Democrats Are Shocked By Biden’s $5 Trillion Tax Increase Proposal

President Joe Biden’s annual budget proposal, which has a price tag of $6.8 trillion, includes a shockingly high proposed tax increase of $5 trillion in order to fund it all — and even Democrat lawmakers are surprised by the proposal.

The president has drastically overshot what he was expected to ask for in tax increases, which has caused many Democrats to grow concerned over the proposal’s implications for their chances in the 2024 elections.

According to The Hill, the shocking proposal will create greater risks for Democrats in next year’s elections — during which Biden is expected to run for reelection, and his party is going to have to defend 23 Senate seats, including many in red states.

While Democrats are mostly concerned about the consequences in the upcoming elections, critics have argued that the tax increases will only exacerbate ongoing economic woes — including skyrocketing inflation and already-high tax rates.

Critics have also pointed out that a tax increase will put more strain on the average American’s household finances. Biden has claimed that he would not raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 a year, but he doesn’t seem to understand that high taxes on the rich and corporations will inevitably lead to those costs being placed on consumers.

Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID) spoke out against Biden’s “jaw-dropping” proposal, arguing that it is “exactly the wrong approach to solving our fiscal problems.”

Most lawmakers were expecting the president to request no more than $2.5 trillion in tax increases, but Biden’s proposal is double the expected amount, and significantly higher than any of the tax increases he advocated for while Democrats controlled both houses of Congress in his first two years in office.

Nonetheless, many leftists are already scrambling to defend the proposal — attempting to explain the high tax increases as just a negotiating tool rather than an actual demand.

“I didn’t expect to see a number that big, but I’m not alarmed by it,” said Jim Kessler, a spokesman for the center-left think tank Third Way. “I think it’s a negotiating position.”

In his most recent State of the Union address, Biden promised that his next budget proposal would bring down the national deficit by at least $2 trillion — claiming that he would “pay for the ideas I’ve talked about tonight by making the wealthy and big corporations begin to pay their fair share.”

The tax increases that Biden has demanded in order to fund his agenda include a 25% tax on the wealthiest 0.01% of American families, an increase in the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%, and an increase in the top marginal income tax rate from 37% to 39.6%. The president has also requested to quadruple the 1% tax on stock buybacks and tax capital gains at 39.6% for Americans with incomes higher than $1 million.