Biden Made $607,336 in 2020, Far from 'Blue-Collar Joe' Campaign Image
President Joe Biden would have Americans believe that he is a blue-collar worker at heart. If his latest tax returns are any indication, that image is far from the truth.
According to Fox Business, Joe and Jill Biden reported an adjusted gross income of $607,336 in 2020. They were taxed at a 25.9 percent federal income tax rate, and they paid a total of $157,414 in federal income tax.
This represented a decline in income compared to 2019, a year in which the family reported about $985,000 in adjusted gross income. Before that, the Bidens were making even more money in the years immediately following their time in the White House.
“Biden and his wife earned about $15 million in the two years after they left the White House following Biden’s term as vice president,” Fox Business reported. “The Bidens’ total income was $11 million in 2017 and about $4.6 million in 2018.”
There is no issue with Biden and his wife making a lot of money in America. If they are successful in their endeavors, then they should be able to enjoy that success.
However, the problem is that Biden has continually lied about his class in the United States. Since the moment he entered the 2020 presidential race, Biden has painted a dishonest picture of himself as a blue-collar worker.
In his first major campaign event in April 2019, Biden spoke to a mostly working-class crowd in Pennsylvania. He promised to represent them because, as he argued, he was one of them.
“When I look out at this crowd, I see the folks of my neighborhood in Claymont, [Delaware] and Wilmington, [Delaware] and Scranton, [Pennsylvania],” he said.
He then went on to promote ideas that will undoubtedly harm blue-collar America, and those ideas have carried all the way into his presidency.
“It’s well past time that the minimum wage nationally be a minimum of $15,” he said. “It’s time to start rewarding work over wealth.”
First, raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour will only kill middle-class jobs. According to a February 2021 report from the Congressional Budget Office, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would kill an estimated 1.4 million jobs by 2025.
Most of those jobs would presumably be the blue-collar jobs that Biden is supposedly fighting for. In addition, the CBO reported that the wage hike would result in “higher prices for goods and services.”
On top of that, Biden has not followed through on his promise to reward “work over wealth.” A more accurate description of his policies would be rewarding laziness over work.
“People who lost their jobs in the pandemic are now earning more in benefits than they did in wages, creating a nightmare economic situation that is stopping people from returning to work and in turn, driving up inflation,” the U.K.’s Daily Mail reported.
The Mail reported that the average weekly unemployment check in March 2019 was $348 between both federal and state benefits. Former President Donald Trump’s CARES Act temporarily raised the average to $938 in April 2020, but it expired in the summer.
Despite the fact that the pandemic is clearly ending, the Biden administration insists on shelling out more money to unemployed Americans in the name of COVID-19 relief.
“Now, the average weekly unemployment check is $638 — still $300 more than before the pandemic, and it’ll stay that way until September 6 at least,” the Daily Mail reported.
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“It means, someone who was working 40 hours a week before the pandemic now gets nearly $16-an-hour to do nothing at home, which is more than double the federal minimum wage of $7.25.”
Even when Trump extended massive unemployment benefits, many conservatives had concerns. At least in that case, it could be partly justified by economic closures due to the pandemic.
At this point, the economy is ready to reopen, but it is being held back by Biden’s insistence on paying Americans to quite literally do nothing. Small businesses cannot find employees, and the middle class is feeling the effects.
Joe Biden is not a blue-collar worker, and his tax returns prove that. Unfortunately, he has also proven that he has no idea what the middle class needs to thrive in America.
“Blue-Collar Joe” is a lifelong politician, not a middle-class American. Electing such a man to lead the country is already proving to be disastrous for the working class.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
