President Joe Biden released his administration’s first budget on the afternoon before Memorial Day weekend, a sign that the president hopes many of its details will escape public notice.
Biden has proposed spending over $6 trillion each and every year of his first term—around 35 percent more than the government was spending pre-pandemic—and during his second term also, if he wins reelection.
His budget appears to be designed in part to secure that reelection. Much of what will likely be the most popular projects really get ramped up in 2025. In other words, Biden is promising in his budget big payouts in his second term.
For example, the budget proposes $5.1 billion for repairing roads and bridges in fiscal year 2022. That jumps to $13.4 billion in 2023, $17.4 billion in 2024, and then to $19.7 billion in 2025 and $21.6 billion in 2026. A proposal to “modernize public transit” goes from $9.4 billion in 2024 to $11.8 billion in 2025 and $13.4 in billion in 2026.
The money for electric vehicles jumps $6.4 billion in 2024 to $13.5 billion in 2025 and to nearly $26 billion in 2026. That’s a blaring message to the auto industry to get on board with Biden’s 2024 campaign.
The money for rural clean water doubles if Biden is reelected, according to the budget.
Money for housing and community development in “Indian Country” rises from $134 million in 2024 to $240 million in 2025, $328 million in 2026, and $370 million in 2027. Oddly enough those same figures in those same years are also set aside for constructing housing for the elderly, as if someone was just copy-pasting budget numbers with no real plan in mind.
The budget has a line labeled “invest in community violence intervention.” Whatever that means, it doesn’t need to be done much until Biden’s second term, apparently. There’s no money budget for next year, just $15 million in 2023, $100 million in 2024, and then it explodes up to $260 million in 2025, $420 million in 2026, $570 million in 2027, and $685 million in 2028. Maybe the White House is anticipating a lot of violence that will need intervention in the second term.
Fans of nuclear power will really want a second Biden term. The budget for procuring advanced nuclear power goes from $250 million in 2024 to half a billion dollars in 2025 and then to 2.5 billion in 2026.
These White House budgets are not really ever expected to be enacted. Instead, they present a vision of where the president thinks the country should go. And a big part of Biden’s vision for the future is “Reelect Joe Biden.”