Biden’s Budget Will Raise Taxes Without Addressing the Federal Government’s Spending Problem

“I want to make it clear,” President Joe Biden said two weeks ago as he teased his forthcoming budget proposal. “I’m going to raise some taxes.”

That’s one promise Biden won’t be accused of breaking.

The president’s annual budget proposal, set to be officially unveiled later today, will include a host of tax increases aimed at wealthier Americans and businesses—which pass those taxes on to workers and consumers. The pièce de résistance, according to a New York Times preview of the president’s plans, will be a new tax on money that doesn’t exist in the form of a levy on unrealized gains sitting in the investment accounts of households worth more than $100 million.

Biden’s budget will also include quadrupling the new tax on stock buybacks implemented just months ago.

And it will include plans to hike the payroll taxes that pay for Medicare to shore up one of the entitlement program’s critical trust funds, which is on pace to hit insolvency before the end of the decade. On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that the budget will “increase the Medicare tax rate on income above $400,000.” That threshold is politically significant since Biden has promised not to raise taxes on Americans earning less than that amount annually.

As a practical matter, the president’s budget is only as serious as its chances of getting approved by Congress. Those chances are slim at best, given Republican control of the House and the GOP’s likely opposition to Biden’s planned tax hikes.

But these proposals still matter because they provide the clearest glimpse into Biden’s sense of the government’s most critical issues. Once you cut through all the political chuff and buster, making a budget is nothing more than setting priorities.

In that regard, one of the main takeaways from Biden’s budget proposal is that deficit politics might return from the dead. The White House is framing Biden’s tax proposals as an attempt to curb runaway deficits—the increased revenue will help reduce deficits by a cumulative $3 trillion over the next 10 years, according to the Times’ preview of Biden’s plans—and ensure the continued solvency of Medicare, the federal go