Biden’s $1.7 Trillion Budget Includes More Money for Ice and Raising Taxes on Those Making Over $400,000
Unless the government overhauls the tax code, nothing in the plan matters, and the middle class gets screwed.
President Joe Biden’s budget is valued at $1.7 trillion. He wants to spend more, bragging that raising taxes on the rich will cut the deficit.
But unless they overhaul the tax code, none of this will make a difference. It only benefits the government and the super-rich, who can afford the best accountants and tax lawyers.
Spending
Ah, yes. The $842 billion request for the Pentagon’s defense spending includes $7 billion for Ukraine. The Energy Department would get $23.6 billion “as part of the modernization of sea, land and air-based nuclear weapons.”
I wonder how the left will respond to the immigration portion of the budget:
As the administration prepares for an expected surge in migrants at the southern border, Mr. Biden’s budget calls for roughly $25 billion for U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement—about $800 million more than the 2023 enacted level. The additional funding would allow for the hiring of 350 Border Patrol agents and 460 processing assistants, $535 million for border-security technology and $40 million to tackle fentanyl trafficking.
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The budget proposes a new $4.7 billion contingency fund to help the Department of Homeland Security deal with migrant surges at the border and more than $1.5 billion to tackle the backlog of over 1.8 million cases pending in the immigration courts. It also asks for $7.3 billion for the Office of Refugee Resettlement, whose tasks include taking care of unaccompanied minors who cross the border illegally.
Biden asked for the Human and Health Services to get $144 billion, including $11 billion towards a “five-year effort the White House hopes will eliminate hepatitis C in the U.S.”
I can hear the Squad screaming over the money proposal to law enforcement. Biden doesn’t want to take away money from police departments but wants to offer “money to help local police departments hire, with a goal of putting 100,000 additional officers on the streets.”
$4.5 billion would go towards “clean energy workforce and infrastructure projects.” The government also wants to spend “$16.5 billion for climate science and clean energy research.”
At least $23 billion is dedicated to help communities “against floods, wildfires and storms.”
Amtrak’s annual subsidy would go up to $3.1 billion from $2.3 billion:
The proposal would also increase funding for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, after roadway deaths reached 42,915 in 2021—the highest level in a decade, according to the Transportation Department. It would also make modest increases to existing railroad safety grant programs, boost funding for FAA modernization projects, and direct a combined $7.5 billion in grants to Amtrak—raising its annual subsidy to $3.1 billion from $2.3 billion, and including another $4.4 billion in advance funding from the infrastructure law.
Taxes
“The President’s budget details a roadmap to build on that progress and finish the job,” OMB Director Shalanda Young said during a teleconference. “It’s built on four key values: lowering costs for families, protecting and strengthening Social Security and Medicare, investing in America, and reducing the deficit by ensuring that the wealthiest in this country and big corporations begin to pay their fair share, and cutting wasteful spending on Big Pharma, Big Oil, and other special interests.”
Young also said, “It does all of that while ensuring that no one earning less than $400,000 per year will pay a penny more in new taxes.”
If you make $400,000 or more, your income tax rate goes from 37% to 39.6%.
Also, if you make $400,000 or more, your ObamaCare tax goes up to 5% from 3.8% “in an effort to shore up Medicare.”
I had no idea you’re rich if you make $400,000 or more. Because, you know, people aren’t having enough problems putting food on the table. They want to save every penny.
Biden wants “a 25% minimum tax rate” on households worth over $100 million. Only 0.01% of those exist in America. The plan also suggests raising the corporate tax rate to 28% from 21% while increasing taxes on foreign earnings to 21% from 10.5%
You know who can afford the best accountants? Households that are worth over $100 million and big businesses.
You know what those awesome accountants can do? Find every single tax break and write-off for the clients.
That means none of this matters.
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
How does inflation go up with ANOTHER 1.7 trillion in funny money?
and with inflation climbing as it is, within 5 years, most of the middle class hits that threshold….
How did they arrive at $400K? Of course, lowering the threshold means more tax money. Someone has to pay for all the welfare and goodies for equity. The Blue state residents… who stay….will be singing the blues.
Biden’s budget is what I call “Colonic Economics”: that is to say, Team Pudding Cup pulled all the numbers out of its collective a**.
This is a non-starter because the house will vote it down, Correct?
The folks directly impacted by this; those earning $400K+ and the 1% at the top as a cohort overwhelmingly voted for Biden and the d/prog for Congress. The Chamber of Commerce heavily funded d/prog in the past couple of election cycles. Financial services swung their support to d/prog some time ago.
As a purely political matter why should the slim GoP majority in HoR spend political capital to save these folks from the direct consequences of their electoral choices when these same folks, as a cohort, supported the political opponents of the GoP who they now seek to save them from the d/prog bad policies which these folks voted for?
Because in four years, the average Granny on Social Security will be making that much.
Is the threshold inflation-indexed? Ha ha, does a bear * in the Vatican?
Not me
Henry,
That’s more than a dash of hyperbole. The average Social Security payout to Granny is under $14,000. That would be one heck of an inflationary spiral to ramp up from $14K to $400K in a decade.
Over 50% of women have zero retirement savings. Only 22% of women have over $100K in total retirement savings. The average Granny doesn’t have to worry about capital gains taxes. All from US census data, FWIW.
Look at Venezuela, then get back to me.
(That chart is ONE YEAR.)
Because a 1.7 trillion budget should be DOA, and not even looked at before saying ‘try again.’
Unfortunately the view that $1.7 Trillion is too much spending isn’t shared by the majority in Congress. If we are lucky it might be ‘restrained’ to a mere $1.5 Trillion. Let’s say the best case is $1.35 Trillion as the comprise. That’s a $350 Billion dollar difference which in terms of Federal debt is negligible. Our Federal debt is about $32 Trillion.
IMO we are past the point of return on the debt. The Fed Reserve simply created an additional $5Trillion during Covid and loaned it to the Fed Govt. There’s a huge amount of inflationary pressure that has been successfully mitigated until recently. The inflation genie is out of the bottle and there are systemic reasons that it will be very difficult to put back in that bottle.
The problem with resisting inflation is wages. If wages rise that creates a wage price spiral which only exacerbates inflation. Keeping wages flat, which is the primary way inflation was contained, puts families further behind price increases each month. All the options consist of pain for someone and the working class, non credentialed, non laptop class have far less representation at the table where the pain is allocated.
I wish people who are as smart as you weren’t too smart to run for office. Instead, we get the dregs.
Puck,
1. While I am well above average IQ, according to the testing my Parents put me through, there are plenty of folks much smarter than me. I have met several in person and am always glad when I do. They give me hope b/c I am not the smartest guy in the room and don’t have to figure out solutions to everything.
2. Understanding debt, deficit and govt finance isn’t an esoteric endeavor solely the province of the credentialed elite. All you need to do is use household finance and then add the ability to print $. Sooner or later basic supply and demand rules the outcome.
3. Oh hell no, I ain’t running for dog catcher much less any other office. I don’t have the temperament for it; y’all want to appoint me dictator for fixed term like the Romans did so I could get shit done then walk way and go home then maybe but I doubt I would be willing to take up the post either. Too much temptation to extend power.
I appreciate your comment but there are plenty of smart and diligent folks who want to do the right things out there. You probably know a few of them in your own life. Not all of them have advanced degrees either. A credential doesn’t define intelligence. Personally I prefer to listen to people with hands on experience who can tell me what I don’t know v some egg head explaining how smart he is.
Bum…but that’s nothing new. Let’s see, destroy every aspect of the economy with lockdowns and hamstringing supply chains, killing small to medium businesses…then…what? The Dem’s ponder for a nanosecond…”Hmmm, what should we do?? Yeah!…That’s the ticket!…Let’s raise taxes!”
More genius at work by the DC thieves and criminals.
O-Care needs to go away, nothing but another worthless welfare program.
A ditch-digger with heavy equipment earns a lot more than a ditch-digger with a shovel.
The difference is capital. Somebody bought heavy equipment with capital.
Capital is extra money.
The ones with extra money are the rich.
Some rich guy figured out a way to make a ditch-digger more productive than he had been, to make himself richer.
But it also makes the ditch-digger richer.
The extra ditch-digger income is trickle-down.
Trickle-down is not dimes falling from the pockets of the rich but the return to wisely used capital.
When you tax the rich more, their living standard doesn’t change. Rather, their investment declines. The extra money goes first.
A tax on the rich is a tax on the earnings of ditch-diggers, not a tax on the life style of the rich.
Think of capital, extra money, as seed corn. Seed corn is extra corn that’s not eaten. It’s what gives you much more corn next year.
Taxing away the seed corn to distribute it as food is disastrous.
If somebody says, “At some point, you have enough money,” he doesn’t understand that money beyond enough money is the seed corn.
Also, I don’t guess Biden is familiar with the old adage “shit rolls downhill”. Attempting to punish the successful punishes those at the bottom far more.
Capital is extra money, retained earning (e.g. savings). Trickle-down economics is managed redistribution by an authoritarian minority at their pleasure.
Trickle down economics is a bunch of BS that left Wingers came up with to discredit the idea of supply side economics.
As I recall, the inventor of the phrase was George H. W. Bush—not a leftist but the next most pernicious thing, a RINO. “Supply side” economics was just a cute name for Austrian economics (as represented by Friedrich Hayek).
Anyone who thinks that tax level is going to stay at $400K is delusional. It’s there to keep the support people who are making $100 k. We’ve seen this, before.
Is that $400,,000 total family income or individual
Lots of people don’t make 100,000k
However even minimum wage is around 17 here abouts
Weren’t we just exploding at $15/hr for McDonald’s?
Well they got it amd now robots are coming
Very good points. Many folks who live in expensive urban areas have no clue about the economic situation in rural areas. It’s not that they are dumb but just ignorant about things/conditions outside their experience.
As an anecdote I was flown into Baltimore to do final interviews but b/c my current earnings were were based on Birmingham, Alabama salary norms they wouldn’t hire me. Told me that directly; ‘you don’t make enough $ in your current job for us to hire you in Baltimore for a better , higher paying job with more responsibility’. My experience and ED was fine just not the compensation which was one reason I was receptive to being interviewed in the first place. This was in the early ’90s.
They literally used the disparity in cost of living and its impact on salary to disqualify me. The partner that had been advocating for me was disgusted, took me out that afternoon for drinks into the wee hours; still drank then. He left soon after, selling his shares and retiring early. He more or less told me this was the last straw for him and advised me to change careers and find a way to retire early from the rat race to avoid stupid bureaucrats that were taking over. Best advice I ever got from a person except for my Dad.
I received $1/hour working at McDonalds in the mid-1960’s.
And the fries were better then, too.
And shared responsibility through progressive prices (“inflation”).
Anybody that thinks that taxes aren’t going to go up for people making less than $400,000 a year has not been paying attention. The inflation that is in Christ prices for everything for all of us is a hidden tax and it’s caused by the government devaluing the money and therefore destroying our purchasing power.
Why bother raising taxes at all? Congress seems to be under the impression they can just crank extra $$$ off the printing press whenever they “need” it, so why not just print all the billions of dollars they’re asking for, rather than sending their IRS goons out to collect it?
I’d say that maybe even they realize that’s a little too obvious, except they do not possess anywhere near that level of self awareness.
And when they’re done with all the ‘numbers’ there’s the trip into fantasy land, a tax on unrealized capital gains. There goes the neighborhood.
He also wants to tax capital gains as ordinary income, without inflation-indexing your assets. One hopes that level of eff-the-taxpayers is a bridge too far and that it never comes to pass.
The vast majority of funds for the border is to process in and support and settle and provide benefits to illegals… NOT secure the border. The left will love it.
In fairness, Hunter is always asking for more ice.
The ONLY “solution” leftists pea-brains ever conceive is more looting, but growth in spending ALWAYS exceeds revenue growth. Even under what leftists consider “too low” taxes, the central tyranny’s tax take alone can confiscate almost 40%, that kicks in far lower than “millionaires and billionaires.” The looters long for the days of 95% marginal rates, even though no one ever sat still for that level of pillage under color of law. The whole thing is a moral tragedy, but the Department of Education makes sure hardly anyone understands this anymore.
“Tax-and-spend, tax-and-spend” and anti-“wealth” demagoguery. The same old, tired song from the vile Dumb-o-crats. This and racial agitprop and racial grievance-mongering are the only tunes in their well-worn and tattered political playbook.