President Biden is reportedly planning to propose a budget of $6 trillion, bringing federal spending to its highest sustained level since World War II. Biden’s proposal is set to include major investments in his widely defined idea of infrastructure, education, and healthcare.
The Hill reports:
Under the plan, documents for which were obtained by the Times, the federal government would spend $6 trillion in the 2022 fiscal year and spending would increase to $8.2 trillion by the year 2031.
The plan demonstrates that Biden shows little interest in taming the deficit, which would remain above $1 trillion through the next decade despite an expected economic recovery. The deficit only exceeded that level in the four-year period following the Great Recession and again after the COVID-19 pandemic slammed the economy.
Rather than find a path to a sustainable debt, the plan would increase the country’s debt burden to 117 percent of gross domestic product by the end of the decade, exceeding its World War II record in 2024.
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“The pandemic has only made things worse. Twenty million Americans lost their job in the pandemic, working- and middle-class Americans,” Biden said during an address to Congress earlier this year. “At the same time, roughly 650 billionaires in America saw their net worth increase by more than $1 trillion, in the same exact period. Let me say it again. 650 people increased their wealth by more than $1 trillion during this pandemic and they’re now worth more than $4 trillion. My fellow Americans, trickle-down, trickle-down economics has never worked. It’s time to grow the economy from the bottom and the middle out.”
Since becoming president, Biden has proposed some of the country’s most expensive spending plans for infrastructure and Covid relief.
On Thursday morning, Republicans unveiled their $928 billion counteroffer to President Biden’s massive $1.7 trillion infrastructure plan. The proposal drafted by Sens. Shelley Capito, John Barrasso, Mike Crapo, Pat Toomey, Roger Wicker, and Roy Blunt of Missouri focuses more on traditional infrastructure and cuts out Democrat’s pet projects.
According to Fox Business:
“This counteroffer delivers on much of what President Biden provided in his feedback to us during our Oval Office meeting while still focusing on core infrastructure investments,” the senators said in a statement.
The counteroffer allocates $506 billion for roads, bridges and major projects and includes a $91 billion increase over baseline spending for roads and bridges and a $48 billion increase over baseline spending for water infrastructure.
One-time increases of $25 billion for airports, $65 billion for broadband, $22 billion for passenger and freight rail and $6 billion for water storage in the West are also included.
The Republicans’ counteroffer comes less than a week after Biden lowered the size of his proposal to $1.7 trillion from an initial $2.25 trillion.
