President Joe Biden publicizes his tax payments as he bids to tar Republicans as party of rich in debt battle

Washington, United States: President Joe Biden is embracing middle-class America in a titanic war with Republicans over the soul of the US economy. He made public his personal tax payments with pride before going to an event at a union facility.

The 80-year-old Democrat is in his political sweet spot as he prepares for an anticipated re-election attempt next year and a major arm wrestling with Republicans over raising the US government debt ceiling in the coming weeks thanks to his visit to a union training centre in Accokeek, Maryland, on Wednesday.

The debate over whether to permit more government borrowing, which has become an annual ritual, will have an impact on the actual economy.

If Republican opponents manage to block an extension, the United States could default on its colossal debt obligations for the first time in history, triggering disarray across global markets.

Ahead of that decision, Biden and his Republican opponents are battling to win the political narrative.

Republican House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy laid out his vision on Monday, casting his side as the party of fiscal responsibility.

He said Republicans would vote to extend the debt limit and avoid default — but only in return for budget cuts.

But in Biden’s telling, Republicans are the party of Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement and more interested in serving the rich than responsibility.

The White House said Biden will “deliver remarks contrasting his vision for the economy with MAGA House Republicans’ vision: an economy that grows from the middle out and bottom-up instead of an economy that trickles from the top down.”

In a jab at McCarthy, who chose the New York Stock Exchange as the setting for his debt speech, a White House senior official said that while the speaker visited Wall Street, “President Biden will be joined by hard-working Americans at a union training facility.”

Tax day

While the Republicans are also pushing for tax cuts, Biden is betting unabashedly on his message that Americans should pay their taxes — and be able to expect government services in return.

Tuesday was the national deadline for filing tax returns — hardly a popular day but one Biden embraced by making public his own tax documents.

This showed that he and his wife Jill Biden earned $579,514 in 2022, mostly combining his presidential salary and her teacher’s salary.

And the first couple paid a federal tax rate of 23.8 per cent on this, something Biden is likely to remind audiences as he returns to one of his favourite themes — the need to end loopholes where often the richest Americans pay far lower tax rates than ordinary workers.

The White House official said on Wednesday that Biden would characterize proposed Republican policies as “tax giveaways that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations.”

He instead will “outline his plan to cut the deficit by nearly $3 trillion over 10 years by asking the super-wealthy and large corporations to pay their fair share, and cutting wasteful spending on special interests like Big Pharma and Big Oil.”

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