Biden proposes raising taxes on the rich in a budget plan with campaign airs

With social promises and tax increases for the rich, the budget project presented this Thursday by Joe Biden he has the 2024 election in his sights, but his most forceful measures have little chance of getting a green light in Congress.

“My budget reflects what we can do to ease the burden on hardworking Americans,” said Biden in a speech at union premises in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a strategic state for the 2024 elections. And that officially only “It intends” to run for re-election.

The 80-year-old Democrat seems to want to appeal to voters in the “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement of his predecessor, Republican Donald Trump. He tries to convince the middle class that the measures that benefit them come from the Democratic camp.

The 2024 budget plan contemplates reducing the fiscal deficit forecast by almost 3 trillion dollars in the next 10 years.

But his most striking measures have almost no chance of passing since the Democratic Party 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.

“Reckless Proposal”

The president wants to introduce a minimum tax of 25% for billionaires, that is, 0.01% for the richest. With these revenues, he estimates that financing for Medicare, public health insurance that benefits Americans over 65 years of age, could be guaranteed for another 25 years.

“My budget will ask the rich to pay their fair share so that the millions of hardworking people who helped build that wealth can retire with the Medicare they paid for.” Biden tweeted.

He also wants to raise the tax burden on companies, from 21% to 28% of their income, still well below the 35% in force before Trump’s reform in 2017.

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”.

Biden proposes to reduce some, especially in the pharmaceutical sector and the oil industry. In addition to seducing the Republican electorate, he told them that their budgets provide for large investments in defense and the army.

Migration

And of course, he has not lost sight of the immigration crisis on the border with Mexico, a recurring issue for Republicans and to which the government is seeking a solution with just a few weeks to go before a health regulation is lifted in May that allows stopping the entry of almost all migrants intercepted.

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.

It also requests 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.

The budget plan is not the only financial issue facing Democrats and Republicans. There is another more urgent, the call “increase in the debt ceiling”.

The United States must periodically increase, through a congressional vote that was once a mere formality, the government’s borrowing capacity.

Kevin McCarthy assures that his ranks will not vote in favor 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.

Source: AFP