Mitch McConnell to Joe Biden: Tax Hikes a ‘Red Line’ for Republicans on Infrastructure

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said Wednesday that Republicans would oppose any attempt by Democrats to raise taxes above the levels set by the Republican tax cuts bill signed by President Donald Trump in 2017.

“We’re not interested in reopening the 2017 tax bill. We both made it clear to the president,” McConnell said to reporters after meeting with President Joe Biden and members of Congressional leadership at the White House. “That’s our red line.”

McConnell argued that in February 2020 the United States had the best economy in 50 years as a result of the tax cuts.

“From my perspective, this discussion about the way forward on infrastructure will not include revisiting the 2017 tax bill,” he said.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) agreed with McConnell on tax hikes.

“You won’t find any Republicans going to go raise taxes, I think that’s the worse thing you could do in this economy,” he said.

Biden has proposed raising the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent to help pay for his massive $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan that includes hundreds-of-billions of dollars on green energy projects.

McCarthy said he expressed to Biden that Republicans believed that the definition of infrastructure was roads, bridges, highways, airports, and broadband.

McConnell said he was not encouraged by the infrastructure talks that President Biden was holding at the White House, suggesting the negotiations should be up to members of Congress.

“I don’t favor having a top-down dictation as to what this package looks like but rather a consultative process in which everybody in my conference is involved in it,” he said.