On Friday’s broadcast of Bloomberg’s “Balance of Power,” White House Council of Economic Advisers Chair Jared Bernstein reacted to criticism of President Joe Biden’s economic agenda during this week’s Republican debate by stating he doesn’t understand why Republicans want to repeal things like “the IRS working much more effectively to meet the needs of taxpayers and to close the tax gap by going after tax cheats above 400,000, in fact, way above 400,000 in terms of…their income.”
Bernstein said, “I talked about how the strong labor market, consumer spending, real wage gains, how important they are right now. I think equally important is the investment agenda of Bidenomics. Another tailwind here is the process of standing up a domestic semiconductor industry, a domestic clean energy product industry, domestic EV and electric batteries. Those are jobs here — good jobs for American workers, and this isn’t a one-week, month, or quarter endeavor. This is a long-term play. These are deep investments. It’s also catalyzing private investment to come in off the sidelines, and we’ve seen hundreds of billions of dollars of complementary investment in that regard.”
He continued, “Now, when it comes to Republican opposition, I will say what I certainly don’t understand is why they would want to consider repealing a level of investment that the private sector is clearly highly enthusiastic about, not to mention direct cost cuts in the area of health care, lower costs for health coverage, lower costs for prescription drugs, lower costs for insulin. We also have the IRS working much more effectively to meet the needs of taxpayers and to close the tax gap by going after tax cheats above 400,000, in fact, way above 400,000 in terms of…their income. So, all of those, we view, as completely positive.”
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