Democratic control of the Senate gives President-elect Joe Biden a much stronger chance of raising taxes on corporations and high-income households.
Until this week’s Georgia runoff elections, Mr. Biden’s plans for tax increases were running into solid opposition from the Republican-controlled Senate. But now, Democrats will hold the White House, Senate and House simultaneously for the first time in more than a decade, and they are poised to use that power.
During his presidential campaign, Mr. Biden proposed raising taxes on corporations, estates and high-income households, reversing key parts of the 2017 tax cuts passed by Republicans and reprising policies that the Obama administration couldn’t get through Congress. Democrats had spent the time between November’s election and this week’s runoffs looking at bipartisan compromises and examining what the administration could do unilaterally.
Now, some of Mr. Biden’s ideas are much more likely to become law, said Steve Wamhoff of the progressive Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, who said that the president-elect’s plans are less far-reaching than some Democratic alternatives and are broadly popular with the public.
“The issue was always, could Democrats get something on the floor? And the answer to that is now clearly ‘yes,’” Mr. Wamhoff said. “Biden did win after campaigning on raising taxes on corporations and raising taxes on the rich.”
