Biden proposes raising taxes on the rich in campaign-scented budget bill

“Help working families” and upload the tax the rich is what is included in the proposed budget that Joe Biden presents this Thursday, with the 2024 election in the crosshairs, but his most forceful measures have little chance of getting the green light in Congress.

“The 2024 budget plan foresees reducing the fiscal deficit forecast by almost 3 trillion dollars in the next 10 years”the White House noted.

To do this, the US president wants to introduce a minimum tax of 25% for billionaires, that is, 0.01% for the richest.

The 80-year-old Democrat also wants to raise the tax burden on businesses, from 21% to 28% of their income, still well below the 35% in effect before former Republican President Donald Trump’s reform in 2017.

At the same time, Joe Biden intends to reduce expenses that he considers unnecessary, especially in the pharmaceutical sector and the oil industry.

“My budget will ask the rich to pay their fair share so that the millions of workers who helped build that wealth can retire with the Medicare they paid for.”Biden tweeted Thursday, referring to public health insurance that benefits Americans 65 and older.

reckless proposal

It is about a budget with electoral overtones that he presents this afternoon in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a strategic state for the 2024 elections, although until now, officially, the veteran Democratic leader has only “It intends” to run for re-election.

Biden only controls the upper house of Congress, the Senate. The House of Representatives is in the hands of the Republicans, who are strongly opposed to tax increases.

The Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, called the plan “reckless proposal” and compared it with “far-left spending policies that have led to record inflation” and “to the current debt crisis”.

In your opinion, you have to “reduce unnecessary public spending”.

For the Democrat it can be a political weapon against the Republicans, who are asking for more budget rigor.

Biden accuses them of wanting to undermine social protection systems such as Medicare. The opposition denies it.

With additional income, Biden estimates that Medicare financing could be guaranteed for 25 more years.

Debt “ceiling”

There is another, more pressing financial issue facing Democrats and Republicans: the so-called “increase in the debt ceiling”.

The United States must periodically increase, through a vote in Congress, the government’s borrowing capacity.

This vote, which has long been a mere formality, is becoming increasingly politicized.

Kevin McCarthy assures that his ranks will not vote in favor of raising the debt ceiling until Joe Biden contains public spending.

The stakes are high: if the confrontation drags on too long, the United States would be under threat of default.

The debt of the largest economy in the world reached 31.4 trillion dollars on January 19, the ceiling above which the country can no longer issue titles to finance itself and, therefore, can no longer honor its payments. For now he has taken temporary measures to continue paying.

Migration

One of the sections of the budget is focused on migration, especially on the border with Mexico, an issue that causes headaches for the government with just a few weeks to go before a health regulation is lifted in May that allows the entry of almost everyone to be stopped. intercepted migrants.

For “improve border security and law enforcement” almost 25,000 million dollars would go to the Office of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE), that is, an increase of almost 800 million compared to 2023.

The amount includes, among other things, funds to hire an additional 350 border patrol agents, $535 million for security technology at ports of entry, and $40 million to combat trafficking in fentanyl, an opioid produced primarily in Mexico by drug cartels. the drug that wreaks havoc in the country.

Given the growing number of migrants intercepted at the border with Mexico (more than two million in 2022), the budget proposes a new fund of 4.7 billion to help the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) to “respond to migration surges.”

To address calls “fundamental causes of migration and improving the lives of people in Central America”, Biden is asking for more than $1 billion as part of his commitment to provide $4 billion over four years for this purpose.

Biden asks for 430 million to manage migration, 40 million to “support targeted programs to improve the lives of migrants and refugees” in Latin America and the Caribbean and 75 million for the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

It also provides 865 million to process asylum cases.

It would also invest 291 million in Haiti, a country mired in a deep humanitarian crisis.

Source: AFP