Social promises and taxes on the rich: Joe Biden on Thursday presented a draft budget that looks like a campaign program in the run-up to 2024, the strongest measures of which, however, have little or no chance of passing the barrier of Congress.
Budget 2024 plans to reduce the deficit by nearly $3 trillion over 10 years, the White House announced. For this, the American president wants to introduce a minimum tax of 25% for billionaires, or the richest 0.01% of Americans.
The Democrat also wants to raise the corporate tax rate to 28%, from 21% today, still lower than the 35% that was in effect before former President Donald Trump’s reform in 2017.
At the same time, the American president intends to reduce certain expenses deemed “useless”, targeting in particular “Big Pharma”, that is to say the pharmaceutical sector, and “Big Oil”, the oil industry. “My budget will ask the wealthy to pay their fair share so that the millions of workers who helped build this wealth can retire with the health insurance they paid for,” he tweeted late Wednesday.
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 outline his plan early this afternoon in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a strategic point state. from an electoral point of view.
However, he has no illusions about his ability to carry out his proposals: since the beginning of the year, he has only controlled the Senate. The other chamber of Congress (that of representatives) is now dominated by Republicans, who are determined not to let any tax increase pass.
With this additional income, Joe Biden estimates that he can, as he promised on Wednesday, ensure for another 25 years the financing of a health insurance plan benefiting Americans over 65, “Medicare”. , without affecting benefits.
But also increase the salaries of federal civil servants by more than 5%, says the Washington Post. All this, as the White House assured Thursday, by reducing the federal deficit by “nearly $3 trillion over the next 10 years,” as Republicans routinely accuse the president of sloppy spending. “A budget is a reflection of our values,” Joe Biden tweeted Wednesday. 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 it intended to cut. Joe Biden is therefore happy to constantly accuse the right of wanting to undermine social plans such as Medicare, which the conservatives defend themselves against.
This budget presentation comes against the backdrop of a standoff between Democrats and Republicans over another financial issue, 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 in 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 debt ceiling until Joe Biden rein in 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 showdown goes on too long, the United States would be under the threat of a default, never before seen, from July.
The debt of the world’s largest economy reached $31.4 trillion on January 19, 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.