It's never a good time to raise taxes on small businesses, but now, with Democrats proposing a 3.8% tax hike on companies that make over $400,000 a year, it's particularly bad "as we are in the throes of a recession," Sen. Rand Paul told Newsmax on Thursday.
"As the ranking member of the Small Business Committee, we've had our economists look at this, and it turns out that two-thirds of the small businesses in our country will be affected by this new tax," the Kentucky Republican told Newsmax's "National Report." "It's an inappropriate, if not a wrongheaded time to raise taxes."
Small businesses, Paul said, "are caught between the crosshairs of inflation, rising costs for their input, and being squeezed. It's not a good idea and exactly the wrong idea to raise taxes on them at this point."
Meanwhile, Biden has been talking about enacting executive action on climate change, and Paul said that means just one thing: Higher gas prices.
"People need to realize that any time these climate alarmists talk about green changes and green climate change, what they really mean is we're going to increase the price of your gasoline," said Paul. "For decades Al Gore and others have written about, Hey, we need gas to be so expensive that people quit driving. That's what's happening now. Gas is so expensive people can't afford to drive."
Further, Paul said that when the talk goes to more green changes, "what they're talking about is $10 gasoline. We have $5 and $6 a gallon of gasoline. Do you want $10 or $15?"
The administration is also ignoring the fact that the electricity needed to power the electric cars "has to come from somewhere," said Paul.
"You don't see the exhaust, but there's still our fossil fuels being burned for your electric car as well," said Paul. "They also tend to ignore the fact that electric cars aren't that cheap and there are a lot of regular working-class people in America who can't afford an electric car."
Paul on Thursday also discussed the growing potential that the investigation into President Joe Biden's son, Hunter, has reached a critical stage and that he could be facing charges of tax violations and making false statements concerning the purchase of a firearm.
"I think most Americans want the justice system to treat you equally whether you're black, white, Republican or a Democrat," Paul said. "The same justice system should be there for all of us, and we saw what happened to a Trump adviser, Paul Manafort. They gave him 20 years in prison or whatever and he's a guy that is of an age that he probably will spend the rest of his life in prison. That was for not having the right paperwork to be a foreign lobbyist."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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