Former Vice President Joe Biden said Friday that he still plans to make repealing President Donald Trump’s tax cuts a top priority, even if the economy continues to suffer because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“You would repeal the Trump tax cuts immediately and then raise taxes even further right away, even if the economy is still in the midst of this pandemic?” CNBC host Joe Kernen asked the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
“I would repeal the $2 trillion tax cut for the folks who are making over a million bucks a year because it’s demonstrated — it’s demonstrated very little or no growth,” Biden responded. (RELATED: Symone Sanders Covers For Biden’s Comments About Black Voters, Claims He Spoke ‘In Jest’)
Biden added that he would raise the corporate tax rate by 7% even as the pandemic ravages businesses across the country. (RELATED: Study: Over 100,000 Small Businesses Have Closed Forever As Result Of Coronavirus Pandemic)
WATCH:
“The corporate tax rate, I’d move back to what I had proposed at 28%, what we had proposed at 28%,” Biden said.
The corporate tax rate sat at 35% during Biden’s time as vice president, which the Obama administration proposed cutting down to 28% in 2013. The corporate tax rate was ultimately reduced to 21% as part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which Trump signed into law in 2017.
Biden has railed against that legislation on the campaign trail, and said last year that his first priority as president would be to repeal Trump’s tax cuts.
“Number one, we have the greatest income inequity in the history of the United States of America since 1902, and the fact of the matter is, there is plenty, plenty of money to go around,” Biden said. “The first thing I would do as president is eliminate the president’s tax cut.”