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By Jasmine Laws and Hugh Cameron
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Democratic Senators Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Cory Booker of New Jersey have brought forward new tax plans that would cut income taxes for lower- and middle-income taxpayers and raise them for the highest-income taxpayers and corporations, prompting some to suggest that the Democratic Party is imitating key Republican talking points.
Democrats' long-held ideology usually deters it from implementing measures like sweeping tax cuts, as it tends to prioritize the welfare state, which the GOP might cut into to offset tax reductions.
This comes as Americans have been reeling from the surge in many necessary costs over the last year, from spikes in grocery prices to high utility bills. Many Americans have reported having to made daily trade-offs, skipping meals and cutting back on utilities, to cover health care costs.
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Tax Cuts vs. Prioritizing Welfare State
The welfare state refers to the system in which the government ensures that people have access to basic economic security and essential services, and includes programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and food assistance.
Support for the welfare state has been a core element of Democratic economic philosophy for decades, as the party has maintained that these public services can act as tools to reduce poverty, broaden access to opportunity and even have the potential to support economic growth by producing a healthier, better‑educated workforce and by preventing social problems that would otherwise impose higher long‑term costs.
As a result, the party would generally oppose cutting these programs to offset tax reductions, as the GOP might do. But that does not mean the Democratic Party is entirely opposed to tax cuts.
The party has historically supported targeted tax cuts, particularly for middle‑ and lower‑income households, while opposing broad or permanent tax cuts that significantly reduce government revenue, or when cuts primarily benefit high earners or corporations.
For example, the Democratic Obama administration supported and enacted tax relief for working families through mechanisms like the Earned Income Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit and temporary payroll‑tax reductions.
Democratic Party's Tax-Lowering Plans
Van Hollen's tax plan, titled the Working Americans’ Tax Cut Act, would in a broad sense reduce Americans' federal income taxes based on their income to "help ensure they can afford their cost of living expenses."
Those earning less than $46,000 for single filers, $92,000 for married couples filing jointly and $64,400 for heads of households, indexed for inflation, would be exempt from paying federal income taxes.
For individuals with income ranging from $46,000 to $80,500, the legislation provides a significant tax break to also combat cost-of-living expenses while bringing in a new tax on millionaires.
Addressing concerns raised about the plan seeming to mirror President Donald Trump "anti-tax" policies, Van Hollen said: "It's hard to say we're embracing Donald Trump's anti-tax message when we're actually increasing taxes on people who make more than a million dollars a year, those are the people that Donald Trump is taking care of as we've seen."
"The focus of this bill is Americans working hard who face an income tax liability, there are other Americans who don't have any income tax liability at the federal level and I support and continue to support the programs that provide a safety net from food, nutrition programs to health care programs to other programs," he added. "I don't see this as an exclusive Democratic proposal but I do see it as a critical part of our overall effort."
The plan would mean that taxpayers in the middle quintile would see the largest increase in after-tax income of 3.9 percent, while taxpayers in the top 1 percent would see a 9.7 percent decrease, according to the Tax Foundation.
The foundation added that it would also reduce federal tax revenue by $86 billion over the 10-year budget window on a conventional basis, though other estimates have said it would be budget-neutral.
Meanwhile, Booker announced a new tax plan that would mean the first $75,000 of income would be tax-free for households filing jointly, with proportional tax relief for single filers and heads of households.
Booker's office said the plan would "more than double the standard deduction for all taxpayers" and mean "the majority of all taxpayers will pay no federal income tax on the first $75,000 of their earnings."
"This tax cut would immediately put more money in New Jerseyans’ pockets every month and allow them to deal with the high price of everyday expenses, an unexpected emergency, or to plan for the future," Booker said. "This plan can be fully paid for by closing the loopholes that benefit the wealthiest few and most profitable corporations."
The Tax Foundation said that Booker's plan would reduce federal tax revenue by $6.7 trillion over the 10-year budget window on a conventional basis without accounting for the unspecified business tax increases.
"I have heard the plan framed as revenue neutral, but I do not know which offsets they would use to reach that intended goal," Garrett Watson, director of policy analysis at the Tax Foundation, told Newsweek.
Both plans have been described as making an already-progressive tax code even more so, and the Tax Foundation said by relying on a smaller tax base, the plans could create "a less stable and more economically distortive tax system."
The proposals aren't too different from previous plans brought forward by the party, according to experts, despite the ideological concern raised by some.
"Some of the proposals we’ve seen recently are consistent with previous Democratic tax proposals," Joseph Rosenberg, senior fellow of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, told Newsweek.
Watson said that in many ways, the proposals "mirror the political and policy dynamics among Democrats who are aiming to balance cost of living concerns and a disinterest in broad-based tax increases with a desire for higher redistribution and spending."
"That translates to proposals that raise revenue from a shrinking tax base at the very top of the income spectrum, with spending—and increasingly tax cuts—being concentrated on lower and middle earners," he added.
The plans also still stand in contrast to GOP tax-cut policies, such as President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill, which "generally delivered larger tax cuts, in dollars and as a percentage of income, to higher-income taxpayers," Rosenberg said.
Newsweek has contacted Booker's office via email for comment. Van Hollen's office pointed Newsweek to the senator's comments on YouTube, some of which are mentioned above.
Can The Democratic Party Pull This Off? Experts Weigh In
The plans raise a number of questions: whether cutting income taxes for workers undermines the party’s welfare‑state logic; whether it reflects new electoral realities in an era of persistent inflation; whether Democrats can credibly promise tax relief while also offering an expansive social safety net; and whether this new rhetoric risks blurring a core ideological line.
Rosenberg said that he thought Democrats could face the same challenges that Republicans experienced passing their large tax cuts—in 2018 with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, then last year with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
"Those policies have not proved popular, whether measured by polls or subsequent election outcomes. It is unclear if offering modest tax cuts will sufficiently address the economic stresses that many Americans are feeling," he said.
He added that Booker’s proposal to further increase the standard deduction "would be very costly to the federal budget and much of the benefit would go to upper-middle-class taxpayers."
Watson added that the use of an increased standard deduction for lower earners and an expanded Child Tax Credit was something the GOP employed in both the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and One Big Beautiful Bill Act "albeit in a less ambitious way."
He said the "pairing of larger tax hikes on the top 1 percent of earners via a millionaire surtax or higher top-income tax rates is also a big departure from prior GOP tax plans." He also said a "natural tradeoff of this policy approach is it naturally limits how ambitious you can be when raising revenue."
Elizabeth Wilkins, president and CEO of the Roosevelt Institute, a think tank working to rebalance power in the economy and democracy, told Newsweek that excluding more income from taxation "threatens our ability to use the tax code to protect democracy, provide public goods, and check corporate power. The government absolutely has to fight for working people. We should debate how to deliver on that promise, rather than proposals that hobble our ability to do so."
Other experts have been more positive about the propositions. Heather Boushey, director of the EconClimate Lab at University of Pennsylvania, told Newsweek that American families continue to face an affordability crisis, "exacerbated by the actions of President Trump," pointing to massive tax cuts for the wealthiest population, cuts that are raising health care costs, and the war in Iran, which she said was "upending global energy prices alongside de-investment in new energy technologies that save families money."
"Families need a break," she said. "A budget that prioritizes taxation at the top of the income ladder, asking more of those who have received the bulk of the gains from economic growth is both fair and is the way to foster sustained, equitable economic growth."
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