Joe Biden has a habit of pointing to the relative economic success of his home state of Delaware as a reason to trust his judgement on massive tax and spend bills like the (mostly) dead Build Back Better.
As Eric Boehm writes, Mr. Biden leaves out a lot when he talks about Delaware’s golden economic horizons. Things that undercut just about everything Biden has been selling from the Oval Office:
There’s just one tiny bit of context missing from Biden’s argument: Delaware, which is home to more than half the businesses in the Fortune 500, didn’t become America’s top destination for corporate headquarters by raising taxes on the businesses that operate there. The state is famous for its favorable tax laws, including no sales tax, no corporate income tax on revenue earned outside of Delaware, and no corporate income tax on investment earnings. (It’s not all about taxes; the state also has a unique legal system that confers some advantages on businesses headquartered there.)
Rather than adopt these ideas, Team Biden has gone all-in for ideas that would make everyone – including the folks back home in Delaware – poorer:
This is the same administration that was warned by economists about how passing a massive stimulus bill would trigger inflation. They pushed for the bill anyway, and now inflation is here.
It’s the same administration that, when faced with opposition from some Senate Democrats to borrowing and spending even more money, crafted a revised version of the Build Back Better plan that relied heavily on budget gimmicks to hide the true cost.
And it’s the same administration that is continuing to ignore what economists say will be the long-term consequences of passing such a huge expansion of the federal welfare state: slower long-term growth, a reduction in average wealth, and ruinous amounts of debt.
None of that matters to a president who thinks he’s the next FDR (or LBJ, but Jimmy Carter is more on point). And it matters even less to an administration staffed with folks who aren’t too keen on free markets, limited government, or individual choice. Such things are anathema to statists (left and right).