WASHINGTON – President Biden on Friday proposed a major expansion of federal spending and called for a 16 percent increase in local programs as he seeks to harness the power of government officials who have a decade of underinvestment in the country’s most pressing issues, to reverse.
The proposed $ 1.52 billion spending on local discretionary programs would significantly strengthen education, health research and the fight against climate change. This comes on top of Mr Biden’s $ 1.9 billion stimulus package and a separate plan to spend $ 2.3 billion on the country’s infrastructure.
Biden’s first spending request to Congress shows his conviction that enlargement, not shrinking, is crucial to the federal government’s economic growth and prosperity. It would direct billions of dollars towards reducing inequalities in housing and education, as well as making sure that every government agency puts climate change at the top of its agenda.
It does not include tax proposals, economic forecasts or so-called compulsory programs such as social security, all of which will be included in a formal budget request that the White House will announce this spring.
Among the major new spending initiatives, the plan would spend an additional $ 20 billion to help schools that serve low-income children and give more money to students who have experienced racial or economic barriers to higher education. It would create a multi-billion dollar program for research into diseases such as cancer and add $ 14 billion to fight and adapt to the harms of climate change.
It would also seek to uplift the economies of Central American countries, where rampant poverty, corruption and devastating hurricanes have fueled migration to the southwestern border and a range of initiatives to address homelessness and affordable housing, including in tribal countries. And that calls for an increase of about 2 percent in spending on national defense.
The request represents a sharp break with the policies of President Donald J. Trump, whose budget proposals prioritized military spending and border security, while seeking to reduce funding in areas such as environmental protection.
In total, the proposal requires a $ 118 billion increase in discretionary spending in the fiscal year 2022, compared to the base spending allocations this year. It seeks to capitalize on the expiration of a decade of spending growth, which lawmakers agreed to in 2010 but regularly violated in subsequent years.
Administration officials would not specify Friday whether the increase in their forthcoming budget proposal would lead to higher federal deficits, but promised that the full budget would address ‘the fiscally and economically responsible way’ for the overlapping challenges. ‘
As part of the effort, the request is for $ 1 billion in new funding for the Internal Revenue Service to enforce tax laws, including ‘increased oversight of high-income and corporate tax returns’. It is clearly aimed at increasing tax revenues by curbing tax avoidance by companies and the rich.
Officials said the proposals did not reflect the spending requested in Mr Infrastructure’s infrastructure plan. Biden, which he introduced last week, or for a second plan he has yet to implement, which will focus on what officials ‘human infrastructure’ such as education and child care.
Congress, which is responsible for approving government spending, does not have to comply with White House requests. In recent years, lawmakers have rejected many of the Trump administration’s efforts to reject domestic programs.
But Mr. Biden’s plan, while incomplete as a budget, could provide a blueprint for Democrats who control the House and Senate strictly and are eager to reaffirm their spending priorities after four years of a Republican White House.
Democratic leaders in Congress praised the plan Friday and suggested it be included in the government’s spending bills for fiscal year 2022. The plan “proposes long-standing and historic investments in jobs, training for workers, schools, food security, infrastructure and housing,” said Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, chairing the Allocation Committee.
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Republicans have criticized the proposal as a skeleton in detail, calling it a far-reaching extension of the federal government. They also said the government was not spending enough on defense to counter a growing threat from China.
“While President Biden has spent trillions on liberal wish list priorities here at home, US military funding is being neglected,” a group of top Republicans, including Kentucky Majority Leader Senator Mitch McConnell, said in a joint statement.
Progressive persons in the House made the opposite complaint: that Mr. Pray spending too much on the military.
“A proposed $ 13 billion increase in defense spending is far too much given the already rapid growth in a time of relative peace,” said Wisconsin Democrat Representative Mark Pocan. “We can not build back better if the Pentagon’s budget is larger than it was under Donald Trump.”
In a letter accompanying the proposal Friday, Shalanda D. Young, who as Mr. Biden’s acting budget director, told congressional leaders that the discretionary spending process would be an “important opportunity to lay a stronger foundation for the future and to reverse it. a legacy of chronic disinvestment in key priorities. ”
The administration focuses mainly on education spending and sees it as a way to help children escape poverty. Mr. Biden has asked Congress to boost funding to schools with $ 20 billion in poverty, which he describes as the largest year-on-year increase in the Title I program since its inception under President Lyndon B. Johnson. The program provides funding for schools with a large number of students from low-income families, mostly through remedial programs and support staff.
The request also aims to raise billions of dollars in early childhood education, programs that serve students with disabilities and efforts to staff schools with nurses, counselors and mental health professionals – described as an attempt to help children recover from the pandemic, but also a long priority for teacher unions.
There is no talk of plans to tie federal dollars to accountability measures for teachers and schools, as has often been the case under President Barack Obama.
The request also shows an increasing sense of urgency in the Biden government to deter migration to the south-western border, while the border security policy of Mr. Trump is broken. Republicans on Friday called Mr. Biden criticized for not raising funding for border patrols or including money to complete Trump’s efforts to build a wall across the southern border with Mexico.
Instead, Mr. Biden proposed investing $ 861 million in Central America, which is part of the $ 4 billion four-year package the government has committed to spending to improve the region’s economy and quality of life. Another $ 1.2 billion will be invested in border security technologies, such as sensors to detect illegal crossings and tools to improve access gates. It also included greater oversight of Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including money to investigate labor force complaints related to white supremacy.
The request for the Department of Justice reflects another shift from the Trump era, with a preference for civil rights issues and domestic terrorism, instead of Mr. Trump’s focus on street crime and gang violence.
Mr. Biden also used the spending request to implement his vision around every cabinet chief, whether it be military leaders. diplomats, fiscal regulators or federal housing planners, who are tasked with integrating climate change into their missions.
The proposal aims to include climate programs in agencies that are not normally seen as at the forefront of global warming, such as the Department of Agriculture and Labor. The money is an addition to the spending of clean energy in the proposed infrastructure legislation of mr. Biden, which will pour about $ 500 billion into programs such as increasing the production of electric vehicles and building climate-resistant roads and bridges.
A large part of the proposed increase goes to research and development of advanced low-carbon energy technology, conducted through the network of national laboratories of the Department of Energy.
Funding from the Department of Energy will increase by $ 4.3 billion, or 10.2 percent from last year’s levels. This includes $ 1.7 billion for the research and development of technologies such as new nuclear power stations or hydrogen fuels and $ 1.9 billion for a new clean energy initiative to make homes more energy efficient and the transmission lines that provide wind and solar power. can carry, enable. across the country. Mr. Biden suggested further spending on the efforts in its infrastructure plan.
The Environmental Protection Agency, whose Trump administration wanted to cut funding and staffing levels, would receive a $ 2 billion increase under Mr. Biden.
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Health funding is also prioritized in the request, with a nearly 25 percent increase in discretionary funding – up to $ 131.7 billion – for the Department of Health and Human Services, the centerpiece of the federal government’s pandemic response. The increase includes a $ 1.6 billion increase for the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, an agency for public health professionals considered chronically underfunded and neglected in public health emergencies.
Nearly $ 1 billion would go to the Strategic National Stockpile, the country’s medical emergency reserve, for supplies and efforts to restructure it that began last year. Nearly $ 7 billion would create an agency to investigate diseases such as cancer and diabetes.
Reporting was contributed by Coral Davenport, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Lisa Friedman, Brad Plumer, Christopher Flavelle, Mark Walker, Dana Goldstein, Mark Walker, Noah Weiland, Margot Sanger-Katz, Lara Jakes, Noam Scheiber, Katie Benner and Emily Cochrane.