One sure sign the Democratic primary race is getting more heated: Those 23 wannabe presidents are promising to take more of American workers’ income in taxes to pay for some of the free stuff they’re offering simultaneously. Such a deal!

We’re sure to hear more about their vast spending hopes next week during the first pair of Democratic debates. They’ll play down the tax angle, except to claim falsely Trump’s tax cuts were really tax hikes. Fact Checker to Aisle 3 please!

Bernie Sanders, a socialist who owns three homes, isn’t a Democrat. But he plays one every four years before large crowds of young people who know some history as far back as the 1990s. Sanders opined the other day on CNN that many Americans “would be delighted” to pay more taxes. Uh-huh.

“I suspect,” he said there, without fear of contradiction, “that a lot of people in this country would be delighted to pay more in taxes if they had comprehensive healthcare as a human right.”

Also this week, Joe Biden, who was for the Hyde Amendment banning federal abortion financing before he was against it, promised that the very first thing he would do as president is kill President Trump’s tax cuts.

“First thing I would do as president,” Joe told the Poor People’s Forum in Washington, “is eliminate the president’s tax cut.” That, of course, means a tax hike for most Americans.

Americans for Tax Reform did some calculations and reports that deleting the tax cuts would cost a single parent $1,300 more in taxes each year, a family of four earning $73,000 would have to fork over $2,000 more in taxes, the child tax credit and standard tax deductions would be cut in half, utility bills would increase in all 50 states and millions would get to pay the Obamacare individual mandate tax again.

Oh, and small business employers would lose their 20 percent small business deduction and the U.S. would once again have the highest corporate tax in the developed world. Think all of that might affect jobs again?

The good news for Americans is most Democrat primary promises never materialize. Remember Barack Obama’s vow to close the Guantanamo Detention Center on his first day? He did sign a paper ordering that for a photo op. But — oh, look! — Gitmo is still there and still a terrorist prison.

The bad news for Joe is he is still leading the pack of Democrats in polls. That’s bad because, as I wrote here:

It’s not good to be even a little ahead at this early stage. Around this time four years ago, Jeb Bush and Mike Huckabee led GOP polls. Before that, remember Presidents Dick Gephardt, Howard Dean, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum? All were out front at this or similar stages in their primary races. And all flamed out.