Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., on Sunday said a massive infrastructure plan cannot raise taxes on small businesses and “job creators.”
In an interview on NBC News’ “Meet The Press,” Wicker, who is on the Senate’s transportation committee, blasted President Joe Biden’s financing plan which does just that.
“What the president proposed this week is not an infrastructure bill. It’s a huge tax increase,” Wicker said. “It’s a tax increase on small businesses, on job creators in the United States of America.”
“How can the president expect to have bipartisanship when the proposal is a repeal of one of our signature issues in 2017 where we cut the tax rate and made the United States finally more competitive when it comes to the way we treat job creators. He reverses all that,” he added.
The sweeping plan includes $155 billion earmarked toward repairing roads and bridges; $80 dedicated to Amtrak repairs; $40 billion for public housing improvements; $111 billion for repairing lead pipes; $42 billion for ports and airports; $100 billion for public school improvements; and $180 billion for research and development.
According to Wicker, however, under the bill “a lot of people making $100,000 and $50,000 are going to lose their jobs because of the extra burden this plan would put on job creators.”
Wicker said he’s open to a bipartisan way to pay for infrastructure.
“States like our neighboring state of Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, they’ve all found a way, a fair way that the public will go for to pay for roads and bridges,” he said.
“When you talk about big businesses and you’re saying we should raise their tax rate from 21% corporate rate to 28%, let me just tell you, that’s going to cut job creation …It’s the very reason we lowered those tax rates in 2017. It’s a plan that worked. If the president wants a bipartisan plan, how can he possibly try to get something passed that … repeals a bill that every single Republican in the Senate voted for in 2017? To me I don’t see the bipartisan gesture there.”
Wicker said the Senate has passed infrastructure bills in the past, though not nearly as large, but insisted, “I don’t want to do it by raising taxes and cutting jobs for Americans.”
He also defended former President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts,.
“Until the pandemic hit in March of 2020, the tax cuts were working just as we expected to them to,” he said. “Unemployment was down. Job creation among African-Americans was up. Job creation among veterans was up, among women in the workforce. There was more participation.”
“The fact that we had lowered the tax burden on job creators, particularly small business, which is the great job engine in the United States states of America, [the economy] was working fine.”
Source: Newmax
