Biden budget to run $1.8T deficit to finance spending plans

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden's $6 trillion budget proposal for next year would run a $1.8 trillion federal government deficit despite a raft of new tax increases on corporations and high-income people designed to pay for his ambitious spending plans.

Biden had already announced his major budget initiatives, but during a rollout Friday, he will wrap them into a single proposal to incorporate them into the government's existing budget framework, including Social Security and Medicare. That provides a fuller view of the administration's fiscal posture.

Capitol Hill aides confirmed key elements of the Biden plan, which were first reported by The New York Times on Thursday. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the document is not yet public.

The whopping deficit projections are being driven by Biden's costly plans for infrastructure and social spending, along with major new investments in domestic Cabinet agencies. The budget incorporates the administration's eight-year, $2.3 trillion infrastructure proposal and its $1.8 trillion American Families Plan and adds details on his $1.5 trillion request for annual operating appropriations for the Pentagon and domestic agencies.

The Biden budget is sure to give Republicans fresh ammunition for their criticisms of the new Democratic administration as bent on a “tax and spend" agenda with resulting deficits that would damage the economy and impose a crushing debt burden on younger Americans. Huge deficits have yet to drive up interest rates as many fiscal hawks have feared, however, and anti-deficit sentiment among Democrats has mostly vanished.

The unusual budget rollout — coming the Friday before Memorial Day weekend — indicates that the White House isn't eager to trumpet the bad deficit news. Typically, lawmakers host an immediate round of hearings on the...