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‘You’ve got it backwards, Sleepy Joe’: Rick Scott claps back at Biden for targeting his ‘Ultra-MAGA’ tax plan

May 5, 2022 | | Print Article

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President Joe Biden, a fierce proponent of raising taxes, is facing backlash for complaining about a Republican wanting to raise taxes.

That Republican, Florida Sen. Rick Scott, released a plan in February that he said would raise taxes on “both free-loaders who abuse the welfare system and billionaires who pay lawyers and lobbyists to help them get around the tax laws.”

He stressed in a Wall Street Journal column that by “free-loaders,” he meant the small number of Americans “who are able-bodied but won’t work,” not working class Americans who “already pay taxes on their income.”

Speaking from the White House early Tuesday, the president dubbed this plan the “Ultra-MAGA Agenda” and claimed it’d “raise taxes on 75 million American families.”

He doubled down in a tweet posted late Wednesday.

“Senator Rick Scott released an Ultra-MAGA Agenda. It could raise taxes on 75 million American families. Under this new plan, while big corporations and billionaires would pay nothing more, working-class folks are going to pay a hell of a lot more,” he wrote.

Scott clapped back shortly after the president posted the tweet by accusing the president of lying and saying his plan would “get able-bodied Americans back in the workforce, cut taxes & reduce government spending.”

“You’ve got it backwards, Sleepy Joe. My plan: get able-bodied Americans back in the workforce, cut taxes & reduce government spending. Your plan: MASSIVE inflation tax on every working American & tax cuts for billionaires in blue states,” he wrote.

His accusations were accurate. Analysis has shown that the president’s “Build Back Better” proposal would exacerbate inflation. It’d also gut the SALT tax deduction cap,  a move that would effectively lower taxes for wealthy blue-state residents.

In fairness to the president, Scott’s plan has faced intense internal scrutiny, because the idea of raising taxes is anathema to what the GOP stands for.

“Let me tell you what would not be a part of our agenda. We would not have as part of our agenda a bill that raises taxes on half the American people. … That will not be part of a Republican Senate majority agenda,” Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell said in March.

“I think Republican senators hope that Rick Scott would stay focused right now on the job of being the chairman of the Senate election committee. I’m not for increasing anybody’s income tax, whether they pay zero or they pay a lot,” Sen. Roy Blunt reportedly added.

The problem, critics say, is that Biden has no room to talk — none. His entire agenda rests on imposing additional burdens, including taxes, on the American people.

As seen above, critics say that they’re already paying higher “taxes” in the form of exorbitant gas prices and forever-increasing inflation.

And if the president ever gets his way, they’ll be paying even more. Even PolitiFact admitted this while fact-checking White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s false claim last year that “no economist out there is projecting that [the ‘Build Back Better’ proposal] will have a negative impact on inflation.”

As noted by PolitiFact, “She’s wrong to say that no economist foresees inflation as a result of the bill’s passage. Numerous economists, including some allies of the White House, have gone on the record saying there probably will be inflationary effects, especially in the near term, if the bill is passed.”

Vivek Saxena
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