Make Your Voice Heard By Telling House Lawmakers To Vote Against Budget Reconciliation, Tax Increase Bill

The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to take an initial vote on Democrats’ $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation this week.

As Connecting the Dots reported last week, this package contains approximately $2 trillion in tax increases that MSCI and the broader business community strongly oppose and it would have serious implications for energy costs. (In fact, according to MSCI’s partners at the Energy Equipment and Infrastructure Alliance, the type of energy policies in the bill have left countries that have attempted similar schemes with much higher electricity prices.)

MSCI asks its member company employees and leaders to contact their House and Senate lawmakers to oppose these policies. What is the easiest way to make your voice heard? The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) has created a Tax Action Center that further explains the impact of these proposed taxes and allows individuals to take immediate action to send an email to lawmakers.

While individual companies and employees make their voices heard, MSCI has agreed to sign a letter written by NAM opposing Democrats’ tax plans. The letter says the reconciliation “will put manufacturing jobs at risk, stall wage growth and limit new investments in our communities.”

This week’s vote comes after Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced the U.S. Senate and White House reached a deal on a “framework” to pay for the reconciliation bill. Sen. Schumer has not released details regarding the “deal,” but it could try to raise taxes even further than the House outline.

Lawmakers right now are buoyed by the fact that Americans seem to approve of the business tax increases that House leaders have proposed. According to a new Morning Consult poll, more than 70 percent of Americans support raising taxes on corporations and “the wealthy” (i.e., small businesses).

That makes it even more important that the business community explain how these policies will reduce jobs and incomes and will harm communities. For example, it is worth noting that these tax hikes  would:

• Discourage activities that drive economic growth, such as working, saving, investing, and taking risks;
• Lower workers’ wages almost 0.7 percent;
• Eliminate more than 300,000 jobs; and
• Reduce long-run economic growth by 0.98 percent, which in today’s dollars amounts to about $332 billion of lost output annually.

In related news, top officials from Ireland softened their stance on implementing a global minimum tax. On September 21, Deputy Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said, “I think we’d certainly prefer to be part of any international agreement” as long as it won’t “impact the average Irish business” or “any large Irish business.” Specifically, Varadkar said participation would hinge on the new minimum rate applying only to multinationals that generate more than $880 million in annual revenue. This news could make it easier for U.S. lawmakers to embrace a higher corporate tax rate.