EDITORIAL: And now here come massive Biden tax increases

After 64 days in office, President Joe Biden remains in hiding — although he’s finally scheduled to hold a news conference on Thursday. Despite his aversion to taking questions from the press, however, Mr. Biden has made his nascent administration’s agenda quite clear during his first two months in office: massive spending and gargantuan tax hikes.

The $1.9 trillion porkfest all gussied up as pandemic relief was just a “down payment” on the intensifying push to ensure that more and more Americans become dependent on “free” goodies from Washington. Trillions more is backed up in the pipeline under the guise of improving infrastructure, fighting global warming, nationalizing health care and other sundry progressive priorities intended to overhaul the market economy.

But there are economic risks in simply ramping up the printing presses at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to “pay” for this bender. Thus, “the White House is expected to propose a suite of tax increases,” Bloomberg News reported this month, “mostly mirroring Biden’s 2020 campaign proposals, according to four people familiar with the discussions.”

The proposals include jacking the corporate tax rate by more than 30 percent, rewriting tax regulations to punish smaller businesses, expanding the estate tax, increasing the income tax on those earning more than $400,000 annually and boosting capital gains levies.

The specifics are designed to generate support from the middle class by taxing someone else — in this case, the “rich.” This is couched in the hackneyed “fair share” rhetoric common among Democrats, who define “fair share” as a synonym for “more.” After all, the top 1 percent of wage earners currently pay more in income taxes than the bottom 90 percent combined, according to the Tax Foundation.

It’s also worth noting that the federal government could confiscate the entire net worth of the dreaded 1 percent — estimated by the Federal Reserve at $34.2 trillion in 2020 — and still run out of money in about five years at the pace Washington currently blows through it.

For the “folks at the top who’ve been able to benefit from this economy and haven’t been this hard hit,” White House economist Heather Boushey told Bloomberg, “there’s a lot of room there to think about what kinds of revenue we can raise.”

Yes, one can only dream about having a “lot of room” to access other people’s money.

The looming Biden tax hikes may not directly target average Americans at this point, but they will have a trickle-down effect when it comes to investment, employment and growth. And, not far down the road, it won’t be enough to finance this unprecedented expansion of the administrative state by targeting only the super “rich.” Do not ask for whom the taxman will cometh, then, because he will come for thee.