Key Findings in Biden’s 2024 Budget Proposal

On March 9, the Biden administration unveiled its $6.8 trillion 2024 budget proposal (pdf). Here are key takeaways from the proposal.

Most notable is that the proposed budget would increase the national debt to nearly $51 trillion over the next 10 years, saddling American taxpayers with more than $1.3 trillion in annual interest by the year 2033. The plan would also increase government spending by 8 percent in 2024 and by nearly $2 trillion over the next decade.

Under the proposed budget, the Trump-era Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will be allowed to expire, eliminating the standard deduction of $7,000 for single filers and $14,000 for married filers. While the proposal claims that “no one making under $400,000 per year will pay more in new taxes,” data published by the IRS shows that not only did all income brackets benefit substantially from the Trump-era tax cuts, the biggest beneficiaries were not the top 0.01 percent, but rather working-class and middle-income Americans. Americans with an adjusted gross income of $15,000 to $50,000 began enjoying an average tax cut of 16–26 percent when the Trump-era tax cuts first went into effect in 2018. Those who earned between $50,000 and $100,000 in adjusted gross income received a 15–17 percent tax break. Those earning between $100,000 and $500,000 in adjusted gross income saw a reduction of around 11–13 percent.

Also, under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, no one with an adjusted gross income of more than $500,000 received an average tax cut greater than 9 percent, and the average tax cut for those with an income exceeding $1 million was less than 6 percent. In short, middle and low-income earners enjoyed a tax cut that, percentage-wise, was at least double that received by those making $1 million or more.

More Taxes

Along with added debt, interest, and taxes added back onto American incomes with the expiration of the Trump-era tax cuts, Biden’s budget proposal would add almost $4.7 trillion in new taxes that specifically target America’s successful individuals, corporations, and small businesses.

For America’s wealthiest 0.01 percent, a 25 percent minimum tax will be levied. The net investment income surtax on small businesses would also be raised from 3.8 percent to 5 percent, on top of state and federal income taxes, and it would nearly double the current tax rates on capital gains. The plan will also restrict contributions to individual retirement accounts for taxpayers with incomes above $400,000.

Biden’s proposed budget would also implement a three-year extension of the American Rescue Plan Act Child Tax Credit through 2025 and make the expansion of Child Tax Credit refundability permanent. These tax credits would essentially offset the $4.7 trillion in gross taxes by about $900 billion, which would trigger approximately $3.8 trillion of net tax increases.

To ensure that corporations “pay their fair share,” Biden’s budget calls for increasing the corporate income tax from 21 percent to 28 percent. The major changes include higher marginal tax rates on corporate, individual, and capital gains income; a new minimum tax on high-net-worth individuals.

Racial Equity and Environmental Justice

The Biden budget proposal is also heavy on “racial equity” initiatives, “environmental justice” spending, and programs to benefit the LGBT community.

The plan calls for a $1.8 billion expenditure for the Environmental Protection Agency geared toward “advancing racial equity and securing environmental justice.” It also calls for “more than $3 billion to advance gender equity and equality globally.”

According to the Fact Sheet, the budget includes $59 billion in “mandatory funding and tax incentives aimed at increasing the affordable housing supply, including for extremely low-income households.”

Another $10 billion in mandatory funding will be spent to “incentivize State, local, and regional jurisdictions to make progress in removing barriers to affordable housing developments.” An additional $10 billion in mandatory funding will go to the new “First-Generation Down Payment Assistance program to help address racial and ethnic homeownership and wealth gaps—making homeownership more attainable for Americans who have been locked out of the generational wealth building that can come with owning a home.”

The plan also includes $471 million “to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity rates; expand maternal health initiatives in rural communities,” and to “implement implicit bias training for health care providers.” It also says “the United States has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed nations, and rates are disproportionately high for Black and American Indian and Alaska Native women.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says the World Health Organization defines a “maternal death” as “the death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy, irrespective of the duration and the site of the pregnancy, from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management, but not from accidental or incidental causes.” Unmentioned was a report released by the CDC in November 2022 that revealed the majority of the abortions in the United States were received by unmarried (86 percent) black women (39 percent) in their 20s (57 percent), and the results of a study conducted by the National Library of Medicine that showed “legal induced abortion is a root cause of the racial and ethnic disparity noted in maternal mortality” in the United States and that “the death rate from legal induced abortion performed at 18 weeks gestation is more than double that observed for women experiencing vaginal delivery.”

The plan proposes to invest nearly $1.8 billion in numerous programs with the Environmental Protection Agency “that will support securing environmental justice for communities that bear the brunt of toxic pollution and climate change.” It doesn’t provide an explanation of how recipient communities would be identified.

Gender Affirming Care, Border Security, and Ukraine

According to the 169-page fiscal plan, the Biden administration “remains steadfast in its commitment to invest in opportunities for women and girls and support the needs of marginalized communities, including the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex community.”

Another Fact Sheet outlines how the Biden budget will provide $121 billion in discretionary medical care funding by expanding health care, benefits and services for the military. While it explains how the plan would invest $139 million in Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) research programs to increase access to quality mental healthcare and another $559 million to further advance the administration’s veteran suicide prevention initiatives, unmentioned is how $137.9 billion of that discretionary spending for the VA would go towards “providing gender affirming care to the Nation’s veterans,” as outlined in the 132-page version.

The budget also includes another $6 billion to support Ukraine and the U.S. alliance with NATO and other European allies. Over $750 million of that would go to Ukraine specifically.

The plan calls for an additional 350 new border agents while simultaneously cutting $600 million from the Department of Homeland Security as the crisis at the southern border continues to cause financial harm to the country and cost the lives of Americans as well as illegal immigrants.

While delivering remarks about his new budget proposal from the Finishing Trades Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Biden shared another family story.

“My dad had an expression,” Biden said. “Someone would come up to my dad [and] say, ‘Let me tell you what I value, Joey.’ And he’d say—my dad would say, ‘No, no, show me your budget. I’ll tell you what you value.’”