As the White House quietly works to foster negotiations with Sen. Joe Manchin on reviving a scaled-down version of President Biden’s ‘Build Back Better’ plan, Biden will appear before the American people on Monday afternoon to unveil his 2023 budget proposal, which will seek to raise revenues by hiking taxes on the wealthy and corporations in an effort to cut the deficit by $1 trillion over the coming decade.
Biden is slated to begin speaking at 1445ET. Readers can watch live below:
So as not to upset negotiations over ‘BBB’, the budget will include what’s essentially a blank placeholder that can be filled in later.
Here’s a quick rundown of the key points from the Biden budget plan (courtesy of Newsquawk):
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Proposes $5.79 trillion budget for FY2023, estimates $1.15 trillion deficit
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Maintains promise that no one earning less than $400,000 per year will pay higher taxes.
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Revives proposal to raise corporate tax rate to 28% from 21%.
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Top individual tax rate would rise to 39 6% from 37%.
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The plan includes approximately $31 billion in new defense spending, which would raise the total national defense spending to $813 billion.
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Plan does not include items from Biden’s BBB spending plan.
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Stronger economy and higher business individual incomes will boost tax revenues by $300 billion or more than 10% in 2022 from 2021.
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Budget would reduce deficit by more than $1 trillion over the next 10 years.
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Proposal claims higher inflation will have little impact on deficit overall since it raises both expenditures and revenues by similar amounts.
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Notably, there are no emergency pandemic or supplemental funds included in the budget proposal.
The budget plan also includes a few other key components, including the following:
- The minimum tax would apply to all individuals and families with more than $100 million in assets. If enacted, the White House believes the tax would raise roughly $360 billion in new revenue over the next 10 years. In a terse statement, White House released a plan to the press, claiming that Biden believes it’s “wrong” for the wealthiest Americans to pay a lower rate than working families, while asserting that Biden is indeed a “capitalist”.
Increased Federal Funding for Police
- The crime-fighting budget proposal would pencil in $20.6 billion for the next fiscal year for DoJ discretionary spending on federal law enforcement, crime prevention and intervention. That’s an increase of $2 billion over the $18.6 billion enacted for the current fiscal year. The proposal also would mandate $30 billion in new spending over the next decade on a variety of programs to expand law enforcement and crime prevention. Details on those programs have not yet been released. It would more than double the funding for community policing through the COPS Hiring Program. It also would add $500 million for so-called community violence interventions – a tenfold increase. It would pay for nearly 300 new deputy marshals and related personnel.
Incentives for Electric Vehicles
- Per BBG, Biden’s budget reiterates previous proposals to electrify the federal fleet and provide funding for states to build out charging stations across the US. The proposal includes $1.4 billion in fiscal 2023 to deploy EV chargers and other alternative fueling infrastructure across the US, which reflects funding provided by the infrastructure law. The proposal will also ask for $757 million for zero-emission vehicles and chargers across 19 federal agencies.
While the additional funding for the Pentagon and for police will likely be popular with moderate Democrats, the budget could set the White House up for another confrontation with the Dems’ insurgent progressive left.
