With Trump in court, Biden begins campaign blitz in highly contested Pennsylvania

WASHINGTON ― While Donald Trump remains in a New York courtroom, President Joe Biden is taking his campaign to Pennsylvania, the biggest battleground of the 2024 election, to hammer the former president over his tax policies in an appeal to working-class voters.

Biden will begin a three-day swing through Pennsylvania on Tuesday with a trip to his hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he will deliver a speech blasting Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans while calling for the rich to pay their “fair share.”

The Scranton stop − designed to contrast economic agendas while inflation remains stubbornly high − falls one day after Tax Day, the April 15 deadline for people to file their federal tax returns. Biden released his tax returns Monday, while Trump did not − following a practice of not publicizing his returns that Trump maintained in the White House.

Start the day smarter. Get all the news you need in your inbox each morning.

The visit comes as Trump is required to attend court proceedings this week for a criminal trial in New York involving alleged hush-money payments he made to a porn star during the 2016 campaign. The trial began Monday.

“We’ve got Joe Biden, a candidate sees the world from the kitchen table where he grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Donald Trump who sees the world from his country club down at Mar-a-Lago,” said Michael Tyler, the Biden campaign’s communications director.

“Nowhere is that contrast of worldviews on display more clearly that when it comes to who each candidate believes should be paying more in taxes and who they believe should be paying less,” he said.

In his State of the Union address last month, Biden revived a proposal to reverse the corporate tax rate cut that Trump and congressional Republicans passed in 2017 by raising the rate from 21% to 28%. The rate was previously set at 35% prior to the Trump-era cuts.

Biden has proposed increasing a new minimum on the largest billion-dollar corporations − which he signed into law in 2022 − from 15% to 21% and creating a new 25% minimum tax on Americans with more than $100 million in wealth, the 0.01% wealthiest Americans. He has vowed not to raise taxes on any American making more than $400,00 a year.

In a statement, Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Trump “proudly passed the largest tax cuts in history” and accused Biden of backing the largest tax hike in history.

“When President Trump is back in the White House, he will advocate for more tax cuts for all Americans and reinvigorate America’s energy industry to bring down inflation, lower the cost of living, and pay down our debt,” Leavitt said.

Former US president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania, on April 13, 2024.

A proposal put forward last month by the House Republican Study Committee would make permanent the Trump-era tax cuts on individuals and businesses, which are set to expire at the end of 2025, along with making other new tax cuts.

Brian Deese, former director of the National Economic Council in the Biden White House, told reporters the Republican plan would add $5 trillion to the deficit and would deliver billionaires a $3.5 million tax cut on average.

“Donald Trump is going to have to stand up in front of the American people and defend why the richest people in the country get a tax cut that is seven times greater than the income of a typical middle class family,” Deese said during a Biden campaign call.

Pennsylvania, with its 19 electoral votes, is one of the most fiercely contested battleground states of the election. Biden carried Pennsylvania by just 1.2 percentage points in 2020. Pennsylvania also features a critical Senate race between incumbent Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., and expected Republican challenger David McCormick.

Trump held a campaign rally in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania on Saturday. Biden plans to visit the Pittsburgh area on Wednesday and Philadelphia on Thursday in a push to tout an economy recovery that’s gone unnoticed for many Americans while inflation remains high.

The campaign swing will mark the eighth trip either Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris have made to Pennsylvania in 2024.

Reach Joey Garrison on X @joeygarrison.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: With Trump in court, Biden begins campaign blitz in highly contested Pennsylvania