Biden’s 2025 budget calls for taxes on wealthy people, corporations | Wilnesh News

President Joe Biden’s 2025 appropriations proposal released on Monday repackaged his proposed tax increases for billionaires and corporations as well as many other requests for the 2024 budget, which is still under negotiation capitol hill We are halfway through the fiscal year.

Like all presidential budgets, Biden’s 2025 plan is more of a wish list than a policy document.

Biden’s budget spending proposal is $7.3 trillion, up from $6.9 trillion in 2024, although both proposals include calls for increases in Social Security, Medicare and higher taxes on the wealthy.

This year, as the president faces a potential rematch against Donald Trump in November, his budget is also a statement of Biden’s campaign economic platform.

In an interview with CNBC on Monday morning, Trump suggested cutting welfare programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

“There’s a lot you can do in terms of curtailing entitlements and in terms of theft and mismanagement of entitlements,” Trump said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

In the hours since, Biden has repeatedly hit back at the remarks.

“Even this morning, Donald Trump said cuts to Social Security and Medicare are again on the table,” Biden said in a speech in New Hampshire after the budget proposal was released. “I will never allow this. Something happens.”

tax the rich

According to the White House, the budget aims to reduce the federal deficit by $3 trillion over the next 10 years, primarily through imposing a minimum 25% tax rate on the unearned income of the wealthiest households and reworking the corporate tax code. Biden’s budget would increase the tax rate on multi-billion dollar companies from 15% to 21% and increase the broader corporate tax rate to 28%.

“We can make all the investments by asking the top 1 and 2 percent of earners to pay more into the system,” Shalanda Young, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, told reporters on Monday.

Biden will also seek to strengthen Medicare and Social Security, in part by relying on new Medicare prescription drug negotiating powers and seeking other savings in housing, health insurance and more.

Biden previewed many of the themes of his budget blueprint during his State of the Union address on Thursday.

“Do you really think the rich and big corporations need another $2 trillion in tax breaks? Of course I don’t. I will continue to fight tooth and nail for fairness!” he said in a fiercely partisan speech to Congress.

Biden’s populist, progressive, tax-the-rich-funded plan isn’t a new proposal from his White House.

Since taking office in 2021, Biden and congressional Democrats have repeatedly proposed raising taxes on the wealthiest people to increase revenue. But even with Democrats in control of both chambers of Congress, the idea has made little headway.

After Republicans take the House majority in 2023, the billionaire’s tax plan is on hold indefinitely.

house republicans Last week, Democrats attempted to preempt Biden’s budget proposal by passing their own 2025 budget resolution in a partisan committee vote. The proposal aims to reduce the ballooning federal deficit by about $14 trillion over the next decade, in part by repealing Biden’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act, which provided massive investments in clean energy and the green economy. .

“Congressional Republicans gave their top line, which included optimistic economic forecasts that were inconsistent with reality,” Yang said on Monday. “Congressional Republicans won’t tell you what they cut and who they hurt.”

House Republican leaders, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, blasted Biden’s budget request on Monday, calling it “a road map to accelerate America’s decline.”

“The price tag of President Biden’s proposed budget is yet another stark reminder of this administration’s insatiable appetite for reckless spending and the Democratic Party’s disregard for fiscal responsibility,” Johnson and House Republican colleagues wrote in a statement.

2024 Budget Still Not Completed

The two competing budget proposals are no surprise in a deeply divided Washington, where compromise has been a rare commodity in 2024.

Repeated divisions in Congress mean six months into the fiscal year, lawmakers still have not reached agreement on a permanent budget.

Fierce battles in Congress over the past six months have led to several near-government shutdowns and cost former Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy his job.

At the same time, the government maintains operations through temporary spending bills.

Finally, in late February, lawmakers reached an agreement on a $460 billion bill that would fund half of the government for the remainder of the fiscal year. The other half must be paid by March 22 or the government will be subject to a partial shutdown.

Despite this dysfunction, Biden has not watered down any part of his progressive 2025 budget request, although that may make it easier for a polarized Congress to accept.

Looking ahead to November

This year’s budget also represents the economic platform of Biden’s re-election campaign. As the president seeks re-election, there are no signs of his pressure on wealthy interests waning.

“Republicans will cut Social Security and give more tax cuts to the rich,” Biden declared in his State of the Union address on Thursday. “I will protect and strengthen Social Security and make the rich pay their fair share! “

Recent polls suggest that after months of sluggish approval ratings, voter confidence in Biden’s economy may be starting to improve.

In a February Wall Street Journal survey, Biden received the highest rating of the economy so far during the campaign. Forty percent of voters approve of his handling of the economy, up 4 points from the same question in December.

Still, Biden will have to play catch-up to compete with voters’ views on Trump’s economy.

in a CBS/YouGov A poll also conducted in February showed that 55% of respondents said Biden’s policies would make things more expensive, while only 34% said the same about Trump’s policies.

Meanwhile, Biden’s reelection campaign is working to convince voters that post-pandemic cost-of-living increases are actually just the product of unfair corporate pricing tactics, the same tactics the Biden administration has been combating in 2017. the past year.

Last week, Biden announced the creation of the “Tackling Unfair and Unlawful Pricing Group,” which will be co-led by the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice. The goal is to put pressure on businesses to lower prices.

“President Biden is tired of business practices that unfairly raise costs for consumers,” National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard told reporters last week. “He’s taking action.”