Biden’s $5.8 Trillion Proposed Spending Plan Calls on Congress to Fill in the Blanks

President Joe Biden speaks alongside Director of the Office of Management and Budget Shalanda Young as he introduces his budget request for fiscal year 2023 in the State Dining Room of the White House on March 28, 2022. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

President Joe Biden’s proposed United States’ federal $5.8 trillion Fiscal Year 2023 budget increases overall domestic spending by 7 percent, boosts military allocations by 10 percent and includes a raft of new tax levies for high-income earning individuals while raising the corporate income tax from 21 percent to 28 percent.

The 149-page proposed budget introduced on March 29 is not a set-in-stone, line-by-line appropriations package, but an outline of aspirational spending requests certain to be significantly amended over the spring and summer by Congress before the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1.

That is if an annual spending plan is adopted at all before the fiscal year begins.

Congress has not adopted an annual budget before the beginning of a fiscal year since 2016, instead passing continuing resolutions to fund the federal government, including the 2,741-page, $1.5 trillion federal appropriations bill approved by both chambers on March 9 and March 10, five months after Fiscal Year 2022 began.

In releasing what it terms “a center-leaning budget,” the White House said its “bipartisan unity agenda” would trim $1 trillion from the United States’ spending-over-revenue deficit in the next decade.

The spending request calls for significant increases in allocations for local, state, and federal law enforcement and a “whole of government” approach to climate change.

The proposed budget outline sets aside roughly $1.6 trillion in domestic spending—a 7 percent increase over current spending levels—to be funneled into affordable housing; reducing prescription drug, child care, and health care premium costs; and calls for port infrastructure improvements to remedy supply chain disruptions that helped fuel rapid inflation.

It does not include priorities forwarded by progressives, such as student debt forgiveness, although it tabs $2.7 billion—a 43 percent increase—for student debt relief.

Biden’s Build Back Better domestic agenda is mentioned only once without any specifics.

Congressional Republicans’ immediate reactions focused on the vagaries within the spending request, particularly in regard to specific costs and revenue projections for social programs and climate change initiatives.

GOP members of the Senate Budget Committee on March 28 issued a memo calling the proposed budget a “phantom placeholder” that “hides the cost of the doomed, reckless, tax-and-spend legislation.”

Senate Budget Committee Chair Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) said the spending request places responsibility on Congress to fill in the blanks and called on members in both chambers to commit to doing so by Sept. 30.

“Now that the president has done his job, it is up to Congress to review it, pass the proposals that make sense, and improve upon it,” Sanders said in a statement, noting the committee would convene on March 30 at 11 a.m. EST for its first hearing on proposed spending outline.

Budget Highlights

Certain to be the stuff exhaustive deliberations are made of, the proposed FY23 budget includes the following highlights:

Military: Biden’s spending request includes $813.3 billion in national security spending, an increase of $31 billion, or 4 percent, from 2022.

Inside the overall allocation is $773 billion for the United States Department of Defense, a 10 percent boost that comes as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine aggravates tensions in Europe; China mounts an increasing threat to Taiwan and in the South China Sea, and North Korea launches intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) designed to reach the United States.

Proposed defense appropriations include funding for modernizing nuclear weapons programs, including a new class of ICBM submarines and increased investments in bombers and land-based ICBMs, and a 4.6 percent pay raise for uniformed service members and civilian DOD employees.

“We are at the beginning of a decisive decade that will determine the future strategic competition with China, the trajectory of the climate crisis, and whether the rules governing technology, trade, and international economics enshrine or violate our democratic values,” the budget states.

“This will be among the largest investments in our national security in history,” Biden said in his budget request. “Some people don’t like the increase, but we’re in a different world today. America is more prosperous, more successful, and more just when it is more secure.”

Sanders is among those who don’t like the increase, saying it’s too much. “At a time when we are already spending more on the military than the next 11 countries combined, no, we do not need a massive increase in the defense budget,” he said in his budget statement.

It’s too little, several Republicans said in initial reactions to the spending plan. “Preserving the peace requires serious investment—and the President’s defense budget falls short,” said Sen. Jim Inhofe, (R-OK), the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, in a statement.

“Unfortunately, President Biden’s FY23 budget has proven to be, once again, wholly inadequate,” added Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), the ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee.

“Most importantly, this budget fails to account for the record-high inflation that is wreaking havoc on our nation. My colleagues and I were clear with President Biden: Our warfighters need a defense budget that is 5 percent above the rate of inflation.”

Law Enforcement: Biden’s spending outline calls for $32 billion in new spending for local, state, and federal law enforcement to help finance staffing for community policing, violence interventions, and gun trafficking programs.

The plan seeks $17.4 billion for federal law enforcement agencies, $1.7 billion—or 13 percent—more than current spending levels. This includes $1.8 billion for the U.S. Marshals Service to apprehend fugitives; $1.7 billion for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to combat gun trafficking; $72.1 million to prosecute violent crimes; $69 million to support FBI programs targeting violent crimes against children.

Health Care: Biden’s budget proposal includes a raft of aspirational goals to reduce prescription drug, child care, and health care premium costs, with few details.

“Because discussions with the Congress continue, the President’s budget includes a deficit-neutral reserve fund to account for future legislation,” the proposal states.

Immigration: Under the spending outline, the United States Customs and Border Protection agency would receive $15.3 billion and the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency more than $8.1 billion, including $309 million for border security technology and $19 million for border fencing and other infrastructure.

Climate Change: The spending request calls for $45 billion in “whole-of-government” allocations increases across five federal agencies, a boost of $16.7 billion over current spending levels.

Among initiatives is the proposed creation of a United States Justice Department Office of Environmental Justice, and a $10 million Small Business Administration program for small clean energy companies.

Deficit: The Biden plan would chip away at the nation’s spending-over-revenues deficit by increasing revenues by more than $1 trillion in the coming decade via a new income tax of 20 percent for households worth more than $100 million and by boosting the corporate income tax by one-third.

According to the White House, the new “billionaire tax” would generate about $360 billion over the next 10 years.

Under the proposed outline, the nation’s corporate tax rate of 21 percent—reduced during former President Donald Trump’s administration from 35 percent in the 2017 Tax Cuts & Jobs Act —would be increased to 28 percent, boosting projected revenues by another $650 billion by 2033.