In what amounts to a 2024 reelection pitch on the U.S. economy, President Joe Bide presented a federal budget plan laden with spending proposals and higher taxes on the wealthy on Thursday.
The details released by the White House – due to be laid out in person by Biden in a speech later on Thursday in Philadelphia – throw down the gauntlet to Republicans as the president builds to an expected reelection campaign announcement.
Republicans in Congress will undoubtedly block most of Biden's proposals, arguing that spending cuts, not tax raises, are the solution to resolving the country's ballooning debt.
However, they are now under pressure to explain where they would reduce spending. Democrats, meanwhile, are trying to seize the populist high ground by framing themselves as the party of ordinary Americans.
Biden's plan will "invest in America, lower costs, and cut taxes for working families," the White House said. "President Biden has long believed that we need to grow the economy from the bottom up and middle out, not the top down."
The main points in Biden's budget proposal include a pledge to slash the federal deficit by $3 trillion over the next decade.
Among measures achieving that would be a minimum 25% tax on the wealthiest 0.01% Americans. And the corporate tax would rise from less than 10% to 28%, reversing a big tax cut enacted under former President Donald Trump in 2017, the White House said.
Biden frequently talks about making companies and the wealthy "pay their fair share," The budget is designed to further that goal.
He expects an additional $4.7 trillion in tax revenues and $800 billion in savings from changing government programs. Biden also wants $2.6 trillion in new spending.
He is also proposing to raise taxes on those earning more than $400,000 a year to ensure that Medicare – the government-funded health insurance system for people over 65 – remains solvent.
Hiking the Medicare tax from 3.8% to 5% for those wealthy individuals would ensure the program's viability for more than two decades, the White House says.
"My budget will ask that the rich pay their fair share so the millions of workers who helped build that wealth can retire with the Medicare they paid into," Biden tweeted Thursday.
Most of Biden's proposed budget is a wish list.
It's the "start of a healthy dialogue," according to Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Republicans have rejected voting for tax increases, saying Biden is pushing out-of-control spending and anti-business policies.
"Massive tax increases, more spending ... will not see the light of day," thanks to the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, the Senate's top Republican Mitch McConnell said this week.
However, Biden's gambit is that by laying out a deficit-cutting plan funded by the wealthy, he can simultaneously look fiscally responsible and in touch with middle-class voters.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden plans to make "the wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share, without raising taxes on Americans," earning less than $400,000 annually.
The Republicans, however, will add to the deficit "with handouts to the rich, big corporations, and special interest groups," she said.
In Biden's election-ready narrative, the wealthy get a free ride, while the struggling middle class needs a "little bit of breathing room."
But the battle over narratives is far from just academic.
The U.S. Treasury has effectively already run out of money for this year – and urgently needs Congress to approve taking on extra debt or risk plunging the economy into crisis.
The previously approved $31.4 trillion borrowing ceiling maxed out in January. If the borrowing limit is not increased or suspended before current emergency measures expire, the U.S. government could default on its obligations for the first time.
That doomsday scenario could kick in as early as July, the Congressional Budget Office said in February.
Republicans say the ever-growing federal debt points to the need for slashing spending. Still, Democrats say Republicans are using the issue to weaken Medicare and other long-popular programs.
