Social spending, business tax hike drive $6T Biden budget

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 release them as 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.

Democratic aides disclosed key elements of the Biden plan, speaking on condition of anonymity because the document is not yet public.

The whopping deficit projections reflect a government whose steadily accumulating pile of debt has topped $28 trillion after well more than $5 trillion in COVID-19 relief. The government's structural deficit remains unchecked, and Biden uses tax hikes on businesses and the wealthy to power huge new social programs like universal prekindergarten and large subsidies for child care.

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.

It 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.

“Now is the time to build (upon) the...