Calling inflation his "top domestic priority” on Tuesday, President Joe Biden laid out a stark choice for Americans in the upcoming election: Vote for Democrats to continue the country's economic recovery, or vote for Republicans to continue hoarding wealth for the country's richest individuals and corporations.
"Look, the bottom line is this: Americans have a choice right now between two paths, reflecting two very different sets of values,” Biden said in a speech at the White House. “My plan attacks inflation and grows the economy by lowering costs for working families, giving workers well-deserved raises, reducing the deficit by historic levels and making big corporations and the very wealthiest Americans pay their fair share."
Then Biden summed up the 11-point plan released in February by Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, the Senate GOP campaign chair.
"The Republican plan is to increase taxes on middle class families, let billionaires and large companies off the hook as they raise prices and reap profits in record amounts. And it's really that simple," Biden explained.
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Scott's 11-point plan has become the de facto Republican agenda for 2022 since Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has refused to articulate his priorities to voters. But Scott made the mistake of telling voters what Republicans stand for, including provisions that would raise taxes on tens of millions of working-class Americans while sunsetting safety nets like Medicare and Social Security within five years.
Scott's plan has become a polling disaster for Republicans. The progressive polling consortium Navigator Research has found the plan is more than 30 points underwater with Americans and, among six key provisions tested in the plan, none of them had majority support.
For obvious reasons, McConnell has sought to distance his caucus from the only GOP plan that exists, saying that raising taxes on half of Americans while ending Social Security and Medicare "would not be a part of our agenda." But the fact remains that Scott, who is in charge of Senate Republicans’ midterm efforts, put pen to paper to lay out the Senate GOP’s priorities while McConnell has offered nothing.
Even Scott, however, has grown testy on the topic, launching a scathing personal attack on Biden's mental acuity in response to news that the president planned to highlight Scott's agenda in Tuesday’s speech.
“Joe Biden is unwell. He’s unfit for office. He’s incoherent, incapacitated and confused," Scott said. "He doesn’t know where he is half the time. He’s incapable of leading and he’s incapable of carrying out his duties.”
That's a lot of thin-skinned vitriol for a man who recently compared himself to famed Union general turned president, Ulysses S. Grant.
Biden later said of Scott, "I think the man has a problem," but he used the entirety of his speech to hammer away at Scott's plan, which he called the "ultra-MAGA agenda."
"Their plan is to raise taxes on 75 million American families, over 95% of whom make less than $100,000 a year, total income," Biden said. "They’ve got it backwards, in my view," Biden added, noting that he has proposed a minimum tax for billionaires and corporations to make sure they “pay their fair share in taxes.”
"Their plan would also raise taxes on 82% of small-business owners making less than $50,000 a year," Biden said. "But it would do nothing to help—to—to hold big corporations and companies accountable. Think about it."
President Biden tied today's historic inflation to Russian President Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine and corporate gouging, but his main goal was to let Americans know that easing inflationary pressure on American households is his number one priority and the GOP alternative would be disastrous.
"I understand what it feels like. I come from a family where when the price of gas or food went up, we felt it. It was a discussion at the kitchen table," Biden recalled. "I want every American to know that I am taking inflation very seriously, and it is my top domestic priority."
Republicans hope to ride inflation straight into power into November, while Democrats have been seeking to chip away at an issue that realistically they have little control over. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been pushing to hold a vote before Memorial Day on a package aimed at lowering gas prices. Congressional Democrats are also working to reconcile differences between bipartisan House and Senate bills designed to boost U.S. semiconductor manufacturing.
But bottom line, the White House wants voters to know that choosing to put Republicans in power would mean handing the keys over to a party that has dedicated decades to making the rich richer and the poor poorer.
How successful Democrats are in making the contrast between Democrats and Republicans real for voters on the issues of the economy/inflation and abortion will likely determine the outcome of the election in November.