Biden budget strategy: Tax the rich
— With an eye on 2024, President Joe Biden will showcase his election-year budget plan this week in must-win Pennsylvania rather than the usual White House setting.
Biden’s trip to Philadelphia on Thursday is a sign that the president’s budget proposal is part of a bigger political push to connect with voters. He’s telling them that taxes on the wealthy can reduce federal deficits and spare cuts to popular programs such as Social Security and Medicare.
The White House budget plan will be a “what if” document, aimed at telling voters what the federal government could do if Democrats were solidly in control of the White House and Congress. Right now, the Republican majority in the House opposes most of Biden’s ideas.
The president hinted in a Monday speech that tax increases on the wealthy will be at the core of his budget plan, declaring that one provision will target billionaires.
Addressing a firefighters group as representatives of everyday, working Americans, he said, “Much of what we’re doing is about your right to be treated fairly, with dignity and with respect.”
“Part of that is making a tax system that’s fair. We can make all these improvements and still cut the deficit if we start making people pay a fair share,” he said in his remarks to the International Association of Fire Fighters.
Democrats and Republicans are jockeying now to show the public which party is the most fiscally responsible. It’s a key test as the White House and Congress will need to agree to raise the government’s borrowing authority this summer, or else the U.S. could default and send the economy into a severe recession.
Biden laid the groundwork for his upcoming budget in his State of the Union address last month and in other recent speeches. He’s pledged to trim deficits by a combined $2 trillion over 10 years, strengthen Social Security and Medicare and limit tax increases to people earning more than $400,000.
His plan is in some ways far more ambitious than what he proposed in 2021, when his budget would have reduced the debt by $1 trillion over 10 years relative to projections.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has called for putting the country on a path to a balanced budget, while leaving Social Security and Medicare untouched. But McCarthy has kept a poker face on how the GOP could do that. House Republicans have struggled to coalesce behind a budget proposal of their own, and are unlikely to release a blueprint unless and until they have 218 votes for a majority to approve it.
The hard-right Freedom Caucus, setting down its own marker, is due to present its priorities that would roll spending back to fiscal 2022 levels and put the federal budget on a path toward balance. It pushed for those policies as part of the drawn-out fight to make McCarthy House speaker, but their plan would require painful cuts that are too severe for other Republicans.
The president hinted in a Monday speech that tax increases on the wealthy will be at the core of his budget plan, declaring that one provision will target billionaires.