Why Democrats’ tax plans are such a mess

J0E BIDEN promised to pay for his big social-spending proposals by raising taxes on the rich and nobody else. Now Democrats are rushing to find a big pot of money without raising headline rates of tax at all. They are making a mess of it.As we wrote this, they were predicting that they would soon reach a compromise on a social-spending bill that would pass in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, where they cannot afford a single dissenting vote in their ranks. Yet they were struggling to reach a deal that could satisfy two centrists: Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who has little appetite to raise tax rates, and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who is willing to do so, but objects to the alternative designed to satisfy Ms Sinema.