South Palm Beach Today

The vagaries of Joe Biden’s economic policy finally became clear at his “town hall” event in Philadelphia Thursday: he’s still the same big-government economic elitist he’s always been

The former vice president — as I see it — is intentionally leaving enough rhetorical wiggle room to convince Wall Street that he will deliver for them in office. It is no secret that Wall Street investors are donating tens of millions of dollars to Biden’s campaign — about five times as much as they’re giving to President Trump’s reelection effort, by official estimates. When one factors in the hundreds of millions of additional dollars being funnelled clandestinely into pro-Biden super PACs and other organs, it should be apparent how much the financial services industry has invested in Biden winning this election.

Say what you will about Wall Street guys, but they aren’t stupid. They nearly always get a reasonable return on their investments. On Thursday, we saw that if Joe Biden wins this election, their contributions to his campaign will be no exception to that rule.

It first became obvious to me during Biden’s talk about taxes. He kept saying he would raise the corporate tax rate and the top individual tax bracket.

The shoe fits. Wall Street by and large does not care that much about corporate tax rates. The big companies that Biden likes to malign for paying no taxes don’t pay no taxes because the rates are too low, but because they get special interest deductions like the ones Biden wants to expand. 

If anything, the lower rates put in place by the Tax Cuts & Jobs Act, which Biden wants to repeal, have encouraged American companies to repatriate hundreds of billions of dollars earned overseas and finally pay some tax one it.

Wall Street investors and financiers care even less about the top bracket personal rate Biden’s promising to raise. They make the vast majority of their money in the form of capital gains, not regular income. A high top regular income tax bracket barely affects them. It’s devastating, however, for small business owners, lawyers, doctors, and other professionals who earn their money as salaries or profits — not stock appreciation.

Biden didn’t mention the capital gains disparity on Thursday. It wasn’t mentioned at all in the 110-page manifesto he and Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders’s staffers hammered out this summer, either.

Something else that Biden was careful not to mention was the TCJA’s cap on the state and local tax (SALT) deduction. There’s a reason for that: Wall Street loves SALT more than french fries do. The unlimited SALT deduction effectively forced taxpayers in low-tax states like Florida to subsidize New York’s sky-high taxes while letting the rich New Yorkers who work on Wall Street deduct them from their federal returns. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, for example, is begging to have Trump’s cap on SALT deductions repealed to stop the flood of high-earners in his state fleeing to Florida.

Like Cuomo, Wall Streeters are counting on Biden to get that cap lifted for them. 

Amazingly, Biden still argues his tax hikes will actually help the economy. Even if you buy that he won’t raise taxes on the middle class, which he has in effect promised to do in the past by repealing the Trump tax cuts, that seems counterintuitive. Worry not, Biden tells us, Wall Street is convinced he’s right.

“[Wall Street firm] Moody’s did an analysis,” Biden told a voter concerned about his tax policies, “...Moody’s — Wall Street — said I will create 18.6 million new jobs.”

Later on, he did it again, citing dubious financial services industry estimates to claim that his “not the Green New Deal” Green New Deal will create one million new “automobile jobs.” For the record, that’s more jobs than the entire U.S. auto industry at the moment. Biden is seriously claiming his electric car subsidies will more than double the size of the American auto industry — something he and President Obama already tried the last time he was in office without one-tenth that success. What is his source?

“Wall Street.”

“Not me, Wall Street,” he insisted, as though he were some plucky outsider, not the 47-year career politician the financial elites are counting on to win and deliver for them.

– Dr. Gina Loudon, Ph.D. (@RealDrGina) is a bestselling author, columnist, and frequent news commentator. She is the National Co-Chairwoman of Women for Trump and is on the Donald J. Trump for President Media Advisory Board and a senior anchor at America's Voice News