Biden to raise taxes on wealthy, boost military and federal workers in budget trends now
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President Joe Biden's budget blueprint will include a 5.2% raise for federal employees, one of the largest peacetime military budgets in recent history and plans to save Social Security and Medicare.
It won't include cuts to federal spending, which Republicans have pushed for as a way to bring down the $31.4 trillion federal deficit.
Instead, Biden will pay for his proposals with a series of new taxes on the wealthy and on corporations.
The combo of more spending and more taxes is likely to make his budget dead on arrival when it reaches Capitol Hill as Republicans, who control the House, prepare to hammer him as a tax-and-spend Democrat.
The GOP has yet to release their own budget proposal but it's expected to slash foreign aid and cut assistance to the poor, including food, health care and housing.
Each party's plan will serve as the starting gun for negotiations between Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Biden over spending for fiscal 2024, which begins Sept. 1.
It will take the cooperation of both parties to pass a budget to keep the federal government running - McCarthy has to keep his Republicans in line in the House and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will need all his Democrats in the Senate.
But the widely differing proposals set up a policy clash that will play out amid the backdrop of election year politics as Biden prepares to seek a second term in office and Republicans try to win back the Senate while keeping the House.
Details about the president's budget, which he will formally unveil in Philadelphia on Thursday, have started to trickle out.
He will propose a 5.2% raise for federal workers - the largest increase from the White House since Jimmy Carter was president, per the Washington Post. But it falls short of the 8.7% raise that lawmakers - including many Democrats - want. He will push for one of the nation’s largest peacetime defense budgets, per Bloomberg, with $170 billion for weapons
