Social promises and taxes on the rich: Joe Biden presents Thursday a draft budget that looks like a campaign program with a view to 2024, the strongest measures of which, however, have little or no chance of passing the barrier of Congress.
In this exercise austere as possible as the presentation of the budget, the American president hopes to find additional political momentum.
The 80-year-old Democrat — who officially only “intends” to run again in 2024, but appears to be campaigning already — will lay out his plan in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, an electorally strategic state.
“My budget will ask the rich to pay their fair share so that the millions of workers who have helped build this wealth can retire with the health insurance they paid for,” the president said on Twitter on Wednesday evening.
Joe Biden has already distilled some budget proposals, without having any illusions about his ability to materialize them.
Since the start of the year, it has only controlled the Senate, the other chamber of Congress (that of representatives) now being dominated by the Republican Party, which is determined not to let any tax increase pass.
“Just share”
However, Joe Biden’s draft budget, according to what the White House has already revealed, only holds on condition of increasing the tax burden on the richest, who according to him must pay “their fair share”. .
“No billionaire should pay less tax than a firefighter!” he had said on Monday.
The Democrat therefore intends to make the “rich and [aux] large corporations, while cutting unnecessary spending” for the benefit of the pharmaceutical and oil giants.
With this additional income, Joe Biden estimates that he can, as he promised on Wednesday, ensure for 25 additional years the financing of a health insurance plan benefiting Americans over 65, Medicare, and this, without touching the benefits.
But also increase the salaries of federal civil servants by more than 5%, says the washington post.
All this, as the White House said on Thursday, by reducing the federal deficit by “nearly $3 trillion over the next ten years”, while Republicans regularly accuse the president of letting spending slip away.
“A budget is a reflection of our values,” Joe Biden posted on Twitter on Thursday.
It is also, in this case, a political weapon.
The Democrat is trying, with his proposals, to embarrass the Republican Party, which is calling for more budgetary rigor, but has so far not explained exactly what expenses he intended to cut.
Joe Biden is therefore happy to constantly accuse the right of wanting to undermine social systems such as Medicare – which the conservatives defend themselves against.
The “debt ceiling”
This budget presentation comes against the backdrop of a showdown between Democrats and Republicans on another financial subject, more pressing than the 2024 election: the so-called “raising the debt ceiling”.
The United States, the only industrialized power in this case, must regularly increase, via a vote of Congress, the government’s debt capacity.
However, this vote, which has long been a formality, is increasingly politicized. The boss of the House of Representatives, Republican Kevin McCarthy, assures that his troops will not vote to raise the ceiling of the debt as long as Joe Biden does not curb public spending.
The Democratic president, for his part, has so far refused to negotiate, arguing that the debt accumulated over the years by the country is a shared responsibility.
The stakes are not small: if the standoff goes on too long, the United States would be under the threat of a default in payment, unheard of, from July.
The debt of the world’s largest economy reached US$31,400 billion on January 19, ie the ceiling beyond which the country can no longer issue new loans to finance itself, and can therefore no longer honor its payments. Temporary emergency measures have been taken to continue paying.