Joe Biden's 2025 Budget Like A Sears Wish Book For Democrats

'Show me your budget. I will tell you what you value.'

Joe Biden speaks in New Hampshire Monday. Video screenshot, CNBC on YouTube

Joe Biden released his fiscal 2025 budget proposal Monday, setting out governing priorities that aren’t likely to even be read by Republicans in Congress, but which he’ll be talking up as he runs for a second term. As in his first term, the proposed budget is aimed at helping the middle class — to give folks a little more breathing room, as Biden likes to say — with several ideas that were originally in the Build Back Better plan but didn’t make it into law. And some new stuff that wasn’t!

Hey, if voters reelect Biden and give him majorities in the House and Senate — a tall order, but doable — the two Senate Dems who blocked many of the best parts of the bill would not be there this time around. That would be especially helpful in finally rolling back much of Donald Trump’s 2017 Big Fat Tax Cuts for Rich Fuckwads. It’s something to keep in mind when reminding your friends to vote, eh?

Biden traveled to New Hampshire Monday to campaign for the budget proposal, calling on Congress to extend the Inflation Reduction Act’s $35 a month cap on insulin prices and $2000 annual cap on medication out-of-pocket costs to all Americans, not just folks on Medicare. On top of that, he called for the IRA’s premium reductions for Obamacare, which have saved 13 million Americans annually around $2,400 each, to be made permanent, instead of letting them expire next year.

Here’s the speech, in which he also reminds the audience that his “predecessor” wants to try again to eliminate Obamacare altogether.

Biden previewed several of his second-term priorities in his State of the Union address last week, and they’re fleshed out in the proposed 2025 budget. Here’s a link if you want to read the full 188-page PDF; the page also links to nice fact sheet overviews of main themes like healthcare, climate, and taxes (cuts for working families, increases for the filthy rich).

So let’s dig in to some of the big ideas here, so if someone asks you, “Hey! What’s the big idea?!” you’ll have a coherent answer.

Healthcare

In addition to expanding those IRA provisions we mentioned earlier (giving everyone the price caps on insulin and medication out-of-pocket costs, and permanently reducing Obamacare premium costs), Biden’s budget calls for his plan to negotiate Medicare drug costs to be expanded substantially by covering more drugs each year, and making them subject to negotiation sooner once they reach the market.

Also too, the plan would keep Medicare solvent beyond 2031, the year its trust fund would run so low that benefit cuts would be automatic. The fix would come by increasing the net investment income tax rate created in the IRA, but only on earned and unearned income over $400,000, as well as adding in some of the savings from negotiated prescription drug prices.

We’ll add that another fix for Social Security, which is fully funded through 2033, isn’t in this budget. (But we know of a good one in the Senate!) Unlike certain former White House occupants, Biden will absolutely block any attempt to cut Medicare and Social Security.

And Biden’s “Cancer Moonshot” initiative for curing cancer would get a $2 billion boost, too!

Families

Our good friend the Expanded Child Tax Credit is back again, restored to its full child-poverty-reducing glory like it was in the American Rescue Plan, with monthly payments to help people raise their kids. God yes, this was one of the best Biden measures and it got three million kids out of poverty for the time it was in effect.

Again: Give Biden a Democratic House and Senate and this time there’s no Joe Manchin to claim that families will only use the help for booze and drugs, which they never did.

Also too, Biden wants a second shot at paid family and medical leave, affordable child care, universal pre-K, and expanded Head Start. Also expanded WIC nutrition benefits for newborns and moms!

Taxes

Biden wants to increase the corporate tax rate to 28 percent, up from the 2017 tax bill’s 21 percent but still a skosh lower than it was prior to 2017. In addition, the minimum tax on corporations worth a billion dollars or more would go from 15 percent to 21 percent. Taxes on multinational companies’ offshore earnings would increase sharply too, from the current 10.5 percent to 21 percent, to take the advantage out of moving companies overseas.

And while he’s at it, Biden wants a minimum tax on billionaires’ income of 25 percent.

Oh yes, one more: Biden would restore all the increased funding for the IRS that Republicans have whittled away in negotiations to simply keep the government open and the economy from collapsing, because rich tax cheats should pay their fair share.

Housing

To fight the shortage of affordable housing, Joe wants $258 billion to go to building or renovating more than two million homes.

Also, to help people get into starter homes, there’s a pair of new $10,000 tax credits. One would go to homeowners who sell a home that’s priced below the area’s median price, as long as the buyer actually lives in the home, no vulture capitalism please. The other credit — which would be fully refundable, meaning you get it even if you have tax liability less than $10,000 — would go to middle-class home buyers, about $3.5 million of them. And don’t forget $10 billion in first-time home buyer down payment assistance!

For people already in homes, the budget would boost the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) which helps lower income people pay their utility bills.

Climate ‘N’ Energy

Biden wants a 29 percent increase in funding for clean energy infrastructure over 2023 levels, adding $1.6 billion to help insulate homes and public buildings, as well as grants to states to upgrade the electric grids. In addition, he wants to fully fund the American Climate Corps, the clean energy and infrastructure job-training program for Yout’s. Its rollout was funded with bits and bobs from the infrastructure bill and the IRA, but it needs its own budget line to actually get young people out there cleaning up former fossil fuel sites, learning to install solar panels and become electricians and all that. No, they will not be sent to confiscate anyone’s gas stove.

So again: None of this will move even a “millimeter” (a metric-system furlong) in the current Congress. But it’s neat, and it’s what government oughta do, so how about we elect all the Democrats we possibly can and make it happen, ‘kay?

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PREVIOUSLY!

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Joe Biden's Expanded Child Tax Credits Coming To Your Bank Account Near You!

Oh No Not A JOBS PROGRAM To Fight CLIMATE CHANGE!

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[White House / AP / CNN]

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