Jan. 12, 2023: Is Biden’s best defense a good offense?

January is a time of new beginnings in Washington. A new Congress. A new Republican-led House. A new speaker, Kevin McCarthy. New investigations into Biden by GOP-helmed committees.

And now, in light of all of the above, there’s a new effort from the White House to go on offense against Republicans like never before.

Like so many Washington trends these days, it started with a tweet. 

“It’s a giant tax cut for rich tax cheats. Bill #1 from the new House GOP,” Ron Klain, the very online White House chief of staff, wrote in a Monday afternoon tweet about an effort to roll back Biden’s IRS funding boost. Later that evening, VP Kamala Harris echoed the sentiment, accusing House Republicans of “rushing to … allow too many millionaires, billionaires and corporations to cheat the system.”

On its face, those messages can seem fairly run-of-the-mill. Playbook deputy editor Zack Stanton and co-author Eugene Daniels discuss how a closer look reveals the change at hand — one informed by a few key calculations.

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Raghu Manavalan is the host and senior editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.