Tuesday, March 14, 2023

What Is in Biden’s Budget?

President Joe Biden finally released his Fiscal 2024 budget. He is more than a month late in doing so and has a bigger budget. In other words, his budget will take us from a bad position to a worse one. A team of seven people – David Ditch, Preston Brashers, Lindsey Burke, Erin Dwinell, Robert Moffit, Thomas Spoehr, and Richard Stern --posted an article at The Daily Signal today shared eight things that we should know about Biden’s budget. 

1) More Spending and Debt

A president’s budget is a request to Congress and can be thought of as a wish list rather than an all-or-nothing demand. Administrations typically lay out an ambitious policy agenda that’s unlikely to happen.


Incredibly, even the Biden administration’s wish list doesn’t include bringing the national debt under control – even with enormous tax hikes….


None of this should come as a surprise. While the administration claims to be fiscally responsible, the reality is that the president’s policies added $6 trillion to near-term expected deficits after just two years in office through a combination of wasteful legislation and problematic executive actions….


2) $4.7 Trillion Tsunami of Tax Hikes

The Biden budget includes several dozen new tax increases that would cost Americans $4.7 trillion over the course of a decade. That’s more than $35,000 per household.

 Worse, this doesn’t even include allowing the expiration of most of the Trump individual income-tax cuts, meaning tax-rate increases from top-to-bottom and slashing the standard deduction by about $7,000 for single filers and $14,000 for married filers – a provision that mostly helps low- and middle-income taxpayers….


3) Bad Medicine for Medicare

The rapid, decades-long growth in Medicare spending has been driven by the rapid aging of the American population, the continuing retirement of the baby boom generation, and the continuous increase in the per capita cost of delivering high-quality care to seniors with multiple and complex medical conditions.


Under current law, Medicare spending, aggravated by inflation, will continue to grow faster than wages and the general economy, and more rapidly than private health insurance spending….


According to the White House’s own projections, Medicare spending will steadily increase from 3% to 4.5% of gross domestic product in 2033….


Nonetheless, the president is doubling down on Medicare payment reductions for prescription drugs….


4) Failure to Address Needs of Military

The proposed defense budget shows just how uncommitted the administration is to national defense, but this should be no surprise.


Since taking office, military readiness and recruitment have reached record lows, while our adversaries strengthen. China just announced a 7.2% defense budget increase, and Biden’s response is to propose a U.S. defense budget that will result in a net loss of buying power. While other federal departments received proposed budget increases of more than 10%, the Pentagon would encounter a loss of purchasing power of about $9 billion….


5) Failing to Secure Border

Once again, the Biden administration seeks to fund its open-border policies in its latest budget proposal and funding priorities.


While the White House and Department of Homeland Security claim that the budget funds things like helping to “secure the border” and supporting a “fair, orderly, and humane immigration system,” it does nothing of the sort.


Instead, this budget incentivizes more illegal immigration by proposing a massive new $4.7 billion contingency fund for DHS and its components to respond to migration surges along the border, making even more aliens vulnerable to cartel violence and human and drug trafficking.


The budget also requests more than $7 billion to support refugees and unaccompanied children in the U.S., with an additional $7 billion emergency fund for the same groups….


6) Spending Spree for ‘Carter’s Boondoggle’

The Biden budget proposes a massive federal education spending spree, likely in an attempt to keep Department of Education funding artificially elevated in the wake [of] the $168 billion in COVID-19 “recovery” spending authorized in 2021….


7) Road Map to Stagflation, Socialism

Among the parade of horrors included in Biden’s budget is what it would have in store for the overall economy. In all, Biden calls for more than $615,000 in federal spending per household over the next 10 years.


This level of spending would mean that fully one-quarter of the economy over the next decade would be siphoned off by the federal government and run through its programs. This budget represents yet another leftist attempt to shrink the private sector and place the federal government in charge of our economy….


8) Leadership Vacuum – and Opportunity

It might be tempting to throw up one’s hands in despair over the sorry state of the federal government, but the future of the greatest nation on earth depends on our willingness to keep fighting for it.


It’s still possible for America to have a future of growth and prosperity like Florida’s, rather than stagnation and decline like New York’s.


This year’s fight over the debt limit provides conservatives with an opportunity to deliver a dose of fiscal sanity to Washington….

The authors’ article contains many more details than I have shared in my blog. I sought to give only a taste of what they include as problem areas in Biden’s budget. At this point, America’s only hope of maintaining greatness lies in the Republican-led House of Representatives. Will they be able to rein in Biden’s spending? Only time will tell. Meanwhile, we should all be praying for God to bless America and then do all that we can do as individuals to protect and preserve our Constitution and our American way of life.

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