Biden levels with Americans squeezed by inflation, says his economic plan takes time to work
By Nick Schifrin
The former vice president on Sunday said his budget proposal would address the country’s growing deficits, and he laid out some of his economic principles. But he also acknowledged that it could take time to gain traction. “I’ve already hit a problem, and there is a lot of skepticism right now about the ideas that we’re pushing and the timetable of how we got to this point in the first place,” he told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “That is really frustrating.”
Biden said he would address the deficit issue by putting more money in American students’ pockets, through tax cuts and increased spending on education. He also said that when it came to health care reform, “There is no other area of the private sector where we can go out and have such a big success.”
But he said that he would have to continue to negotiate with lawmakers to take concrete steps to put more money into the pockets of Americans. “We need to have tough negotiations with Congress, but I think you saw a lot of those, and we’ll continue to do that,” he said.
Biden, a Democrat, also suggested he would do more on tax reform. “I think we need to have tax reform. I think you saw the administration do tax reform that was successful at the end of 2013, and I think we need to try to do that again.”
President Barack Obama is expected to announce his own plan for deficit reduction on Wednesday, but Biden said he won’t be a part of it. “I’m not part of the strategy to make the deficit go down, but I’m going to push for it, and I hope I can be part of the strategy to make it go away,” he said.
His plan is to cut rates for the middle class, including a reduction of the tax rate on income earned above $250,000 — something he has previously supported on the campaign trail. He would also be looking at increasing the Child Tax Credit.
“There’s a lot of things I would do.” Biden said. “There’s not a lot of things like we did when I was in the vice presidency. I don’t have that deep of a plan. We’ve got some good ideas, and we have to put them out there.”
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