Biden to outline budget plan for 2024

WASHINGTON (AP) — Looking ahead to 2024, U.S. President Joe Biden will present his election-year budget plans in Pennsylvania, a state with massive electoral clout, this week instead of the traditional White House event.

Biden’s trip to Philadelphia on Thursday is a sign that the president’s budget proposal is part of a larger political effort to connect with voters and not just a preview of government finances for the next fiscal year.

The White House budget plan will be a “what if” document, intended to tell voters what the federal government might do if Democrats controlled the White House and Congress. Currently, the Republican majority in the House of Representatives opposes most of Biden’s ideas.

The president hinted in a speech on Monday that tax increases for the wealthy would be a key part of his budget plan, saying one provision was aimed at billionaires.

Addressing a group of firefighters who represented ordinary working Americans, he said: “A lot of what we do is about their right to be treated with fairness, dignity and respect.”

“Part of that is making the tax system fair. We can make all of these improvements and continue to reduce the deficit if we start making people pay their fair share,” he said in an address to the International Association of Fire Fighters.

Democrats and Republicans are currently competing to show the public which party is more fiscally responsible. This is a key test as the White House and Congress will need to agree to increase borrowing capacity this summer or the United States could default and plunge the economy into a deep recession.

Biden laid the groundwork for his next budget in his State of the Union address last month and at other recent events. He promised to cut deficits by a total of $2 trillion over 10 years, strengthen Social Security and Medicare, and limit tax increases to people earning more than $400,000 a year. year.

In some ways, his plan is far more ambitious than what he proposed in 2021, when his budget would have reduced debt by $1 trillion over 10 years than projected.

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Associated Press writer Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.