President Biden Monday unveiled an election-year budget for next fiscal year that includes tax breaks for families, lower health care costs and higher taxes on the super-wealthy and big corporations.
Clearly aimed at voters, the $7.3 trillion blueprint is framed as a grab bag of Democratic priorities that put meat on the bones of some of Biden’s applause-winning proposals from last week’s State of the Union address.
Under the proposed budget, parents would get an increased child tax credit, reviving a popular COVID-era policy that Republicans refused to renew.
First-time homebuyers would get a fat tax credit in a move to unfreeze the tight housing market. Corporations would see their taxes jump significantly, while billionaires would be charged a minimum tax of 25%.
Biden also wants Medicare to be able to negotiate prices on 500 prescription drugs, which could save $200 billion over 10 years.
The federal budget deficit would be trimmed by $3 trillion over a decade, or so the White House says.
The president also wants $4.7 billion more for border security after GOP shot down a bipartisan compromise on the issue.
There’s one giant catch: With Republicans in control of the House and can block legislation in the nearly evenly divided Senate, the Biden budget has very little chance of becoming law.
Leaders for the GOP, whose members wield influence over the purse strings, have put forward their own spending blueprint that uses very rosy economic projections and deep cuts in health spending to achieve much deeper deficit cuts.
The president traveled Monday for a campaign speech in New Hampshire, where he planned to pitch the budget and call on Congress to apply his $2,000 cap on drug costs and $35 insulin to everyone, not just senior citizens on Medicare.
He’ll also seek to make permanent some protections in the Affordable Care Act that could expire next year.
“A fair tax code is how we invest in things that make this country great: health care, education, defense and so much more,” an energized Biden said at Thursday’s well-received State of the Union address.
Biden often rails against former President Trump’s 2017 $2 trillion tax cut that disproportionately benefited the top 1% of earners and caused the budget deficit to balloon.
Trump, who is all but certain to face Biden in a presidential rematch, says he would double down on the same tax cuts and vows to rein in the deficit, albeit without detailing any spending cuts.
The dueling budget plans for 2025 come as Congress is still working on a budget for the current fiscal year, which is nearly half over.
On Saturday, Biden signed into law a $460 billion package to avoid a shutdown of several federal agencies, but lawmakers still have to finalize spending for about half the government for the rest of the spending year.
