Biden's budget reflects the challenges Democrats face

It can't be said that the $5.8 trillion spending plan that President Joe Biden announced a week ago Monday was ignored, since leaders of both parties issued the mix of praise and censure you'd expect. But it's receiving less attention than it deserves. Biden's budget reflects the intricacy of the coalition he leads, the challenges his party faces, and the radical changes in the national and international landscape over just a few months.

Budgets rarely decide elections, and this one certainly won't. If Democrats beat the odds and maintain their House and Senate majorities, it will be because of a backlash against the forces of right-wing radicalism in the Republican Party and improvements in the public mood about the economy and the course of the pandemic.

But to have even a shot at pulling off an upset in November, the party needs to solve two very different problems.

It needs to win back moderates who supported Biden in 2020 but have swung away since. A president elected with just over 51 percent of the vote now has approval ratings hovering between 40 and 45 percent.

At the same time, Democrats must turn out their core supporters dispirited by Congress's failure to pass voting rights bills and Biden's Build Back Better proposals. An indicator of where enthusiasm lies: An Economist/ Yougov poll from recent days found that while 38 percent of Americans strongly disapprove of Biden's job performance, only 18 percent strongly approve.

Biden knows he needs to shore up support at both ends of the alliance that elected him, and these dual imperatives were obvious in his budget. Many have described it as a move to the center, and in important ways it is. Yet it also includes both spending proposals and tax increases on the wealthy that progressives will welcome.

The shift to the middle includes his commitment to $1 trillion in deficit reduction. Biden asked Congress for more than $30 billion to fight crime, inoculating Democrats against efforts to associate the party with calls to “defund the police.” He pushed defense spending up 10 percent, to more than $800 billion, pointing to an urgency created by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. And he put money behind his “unity agenda,” proposing new investments to combat the opioid crisis, find cures for cancer, and improve care for veterans and for mental health.

But progressives were not left out. Rep. John Yarmuth, D-KY., who chairs the House Budget Committee, noted in an interview that the budget also “generously funds Democratic priorities that have been neglected for a long time, including education, child care, health care, including veterans' health care, and pay increases for military and civilian government employees.”

Biden also made an implicit promise to keep fighting for elements of his Build Back Better proposal by remaining vague about the particulars. If being highly specific last year failed to push his plan through, Biden is now prepared to leave the details to Congress and declare victory on whatever he can get.

His emphasis on reducing the deficit was clearly a form of outreach to Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-W.VA., who has signaled that he would support parts of Build Back Better this year, including perhaps $500 billion in spending to combat climate change — as long as some steps are taken to contain future red ink.

Even if its chances of passing are limited, his proposal to tax the very wealthy on the basis of unrealized gains from their investments could be Biden's most innovative idea — and one likely to create a helpful contrast with Republicans this fall.

Jason Furman, who chaired the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President Barack Obama, noted in the Wall Street Journal this week that Biden's plan “could solve many of the problems that have bedeviled earlier approaches to taxing the income from wealth.”

Noting the recent suggestion from Sen. Rick Scott, R-fla., the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, to raise taxes on the half of Americans with the lowest incomes, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., was almost gleeful in responding to Biden's proposal.

On the Senate floor Monday, Schumer contrasted Biden's efforts to have “the ultra-rich chip in to growing our country” with Scott “openly calling raising taxes on half of Americans.”

Biden's budget is no cure-all for what ails Democrats. Many progressives are unhappy with the proposed defense increases even as Republicans continue to attack Biden's domestic spending (while simultaneously insisting on more for the military).

But on page after page, as Yarmuth said, Biden's plan closely matches today's headlines. It acknowledges the hurdles Biden and his party face. It can be read as the first draft of a strategy to get past them.