Biden wants to cut the deficit by taxing billionaires and big corporations

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Joe Biden's 2024 budget, presented Thursday, plans to cut the deficit by nearly $3 trillion over 10 years, introducing a minimum tax for billionaires and raising the corporate tax rate.

At the same time, the American president intends to reduce certain expenses deemed “useless”, targeting in particular “Big Pharma”, that is to say the pharmaceutical sector, and “Big Oil”, the oil industry. 

The strongest measures, however, have little or no chance of passing the barrier of Congress, now partially controlled by the Republican opposition.

In this austere possible exercise that is presentation of the budget, the American president hopes to find additional political momentum.

The 80-year-old Democrat – who officially only “intends” to run again in 2024, but appears to be campaigning already – will lay out his plan in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, an electorally strategic state.

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“No billionaire should pay less tax than a firefighter!”, he said on Monday.

The Democrat therefore intends to charge more taxes the “rich and (the) big corporations, while cutting wasteful spending” for the benefit of the pharmaceutical and oil giants.

With this additional income, Joe Biden estimates that he can, as he promised on Wednesday, ensure for 25 additional years the financing of a health insurance plan benefiting Americans over 65, the “Medicare without affecting benefits.

But also increase the salaries of federal civil servants by more than 5%, says the Washington Post.

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All this, as the White House said on Thursday, by reducing the federal deficit by “nearly $3 trillion over the next ten years”, while Republicans regularly accuse the president of letting spending slip away.

“A budget is a reflection of our values,” Joe Biden tweeted Thursday.

It is also, in this case, a political weapon.

The Democrat is trying, with his proposals, to embarrass the Republican Party, which is calling for more budgetary rigor, but has so far not explained exactly what expenses he intends to cut.

< p>Joe Biden is therefore happy to constantly accuse the right of wanting to undermine social plans such as Medicare – which the conservatives defend themselves against.

This budget presentation comes against the backdrop of a showdown between Democrats and Republicans over another financial issue, more pressing than the 2024 election: the so-called “raising the debt ceiling”.

The United States, the only industrialized power in this case, must regularly increase, via a vote in Congress, the government's debt capacity.

However, this vote, which has long been a formality, is to increasingly politicized. House of Representatives boss Republican Kevin McCarthy says his troops won't vote to raise the debt ceiling until Joe Biden rein ins public spending.

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The Democratic president, for his part, has so far refused to negotiate, arguing that the debt accumulated over the years by the country is a shared responsibility.

The issue is not small: if the arm wrestling goes on too long, the United States would be under the threat of a payment default, unheard of, from July.

The debt of the the world's largest economy reached 31.4 trillion dollars on January 19, the ceiling beyond which the country can no longer issue new loans to finance itself, and can therefore no longer honor its payments. Temporary emergency measures have been taken to continue paying.