Washington, D.C. — Today, President Joe Biden announced his proposal for recommended levels of discretionary spending for fiscal year 2022, ahead of a full budget proposal later this year, as is typical of new presidents. Following the announcement, Mara Rudman, executive vice president for Policy at the Center for American Progress, released the following statement:
President Biden’s funding request to Congress lays out a progressive foundation for sustainable growth that will benefit the American people, especially workers and the middle class, not just the wealthy. The president’s proposal will reverse a decade of disinvestment in our people and our government. Even before the COVID-19 crisis, a decade of austerity budgeting held us back in meeting our most important challenges, from climate change to mounting economic inequality, while also weakening many basic government programs and services. With today’s proposal, President Biden has illustrated a deep commitment to tackle these challenges head-on, while continuing to support the country as it recovers from the pandemic.
In addition to building a world-class system of infrastructure and providing a historic level of funding for environmental justice programs, this discretionary request prioritizes racial justice, bolsters civil rights enforcement, renews public education as a priority, and supports working parents and their children through investments in child care and Head Start. It also makes critical investments in public health by requesting the largest budget increase for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in decades and providing important increases in funds for maternal and reproductive health care, programs to combat gender-based violence and to improve access to mental health and home- and community-based services, as well as investments in biomedical research. And with this proposal, the Biden administration is also taking a big step toward ensuring that everyone is paying their fair share, by providing additional resources to the IRS to crack down on individual and corporate tax dodgers. Today’s discretionary funding request marks an important turning point in U.S. fiscal policy and a historic reinvestment in the American people.
For further background on the discretionary spending cuts over the last decade that President Biden’s funding request reverses, see “Reversing a Decade of Domestic Disinvestment” by Seth Hanlon and Lorena Roque.
For more information or to speak with an expert, contact Julia Cusick at [email protected].