Biden budget seeks more for schools, health care and housing
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden released a $1.5 trillion wish list for the federal budget on Friday, asking for an 8.4% increase in agency operating budgets with substantial gains for Democratic priorities like education, health care, housing and environmental protection.
The request by the White House budget office spells out Biden's top priorities as Congress weighs its spending plans for next year. It's the first financial outline of Democrats' broader ambitions since the expiration of a 2011 law that capped congressional spending.
At stake is roughly one-third of the huge federal budget that is passed by Congress each year, funding the military, domestic Cabinet department operations, foreign policy and homeland security. The rest of the budget involves so-called mandatory programs that are locked in and basically run on autopilot, chiefly Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
This so-called discretionary spending passes each year on a bipartisan basis through Capitol Hill's time-tested appropriations process. The Biden request provides a significantly smaller 1.6% increase to the $700 billionplus Pentagon budget than it provides to domestic accounts. Homeland security accounts would basically be frozen, reflecting opposition among Democratic progressives to immigration security forces.
The appropriations process was, in fact, one of the few consistent success stories of former President Donald Trump's tumultuous four-year tenure in office, but this year's budget cycle is not governed by a broader outline. The lapse of formal "caps" on appropriations opens the door to more domestic spending favored by Biden and Democrats but invites a battle with Republicans over military accounts.
The Biden administration believes the caps, imposed by a long-abandoned 2011 budget deal, caused a decade of severe underinvestment in public services that the president is now trying to turn around with large increases that would mostly bypass national security programs.
An administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations, said the request would bring spending in line with historic averages.