WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden proposed a $6.8 trillion budget for the 2024 fiscal year on Thursday, laying out plans that include increasing military spending, promoting social welfare programs, raising taxes on the rich and deficit reduction. The US will invest in new ways to outcompete China globally, as the latter is “the US’ only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it,” read the US budget.
Analysts believed that the budget plan reflected the Biden administration’s intention to beef up military deterrence abroad and be more competitive in civilian affairs as the 2024 election approaches. However, given the polarization and deep-rooted political differences between the two parties, social welfare program and tax increases on the rich in Biden’s plan are unlikely to be entirely accepted by the Republican-controlled House, and in the context of great power confrontation, defense spending increases are becoming a rare consensus, which means that “weighing guns more than butter” is increasingly becoming a bipartisan trend.
According to the 182-page proposal, the White House plans to slash the deficit by $3 trillion over the next decade, and raise trillions of dollars in taxes on the wealthy and corporations, including by instituting a 25 percent minimum tax on the top 0.01 percent wealthiest Americans, while boosting investment in child care, education, housing and health care.
–The Daily Mail-CGTN news exchange item
