This file photo taken on April 8, 2021 shows the White House in Washington, DC, the United States. (LIU JIE / XINHUA)
WASHINGTON – The White House on Friday unveiled a US$6 trillion budget proposal for the 2022 fiscal year, drawing backlash from Republican lawmakers and budget watchers.
The proposal, which included President Joe Biden's plan to increase investment in infrastructure, eduction, health care and beyond, would push federal spending to the highest sustained levels in decades.
So far the Biden Administration has recommended we spend additional US$7 trillion this year … That would be more than we spent during World War II … Democrats need to get their runaway spending habits under control.
Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader
The budget calls for total spending to run above US$6 trillion throughout the next decade, and rise to US$8.2 trillion by fiscal year 2031. Deficits, meanwhile, would stay above 1.3 trillion dollars in the next 10 years.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell lashed out at the plan, arguing, "Americans are already hurting from far-left economics that ignore reality."
"So far the Biden Administration has recommended we spend additional US$7 trillion this year," the Republican leader said on Twitter. "That would be more than we spent during World War II."
"Democrats need to get their runaway spending habits under control," McConnell said.
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Biden, however, argued that the American Rescue Plan, the US$1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package approved in March, is just a "first step," noting that more investments are needed to set America on a sustainable path to a faster, more inclusive economic growth.
"Now is the time to build the foundation that we've laid – to make bold investments in our families, in our communities, in our nation. We know from history that these kinds of investments raise both the floor and the ceiling of the economy for everybody," the US president said Thursday in a speech in Ohio.
Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog group, said in a statement that the president's budget for fiscal year 2022 calls for a "large increase" in non-defense discretionary spending next year as well as "substantial spending" for infrastructure and social programs over the upcoming decade.
The foundation noted that the administration proposes increasing revenues to cover the cost of their longer-term initiatives; "however, those costs would not be fully offset during the traditional 10-year window, rather over a 15-year period."
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"In addition, the underlying structural imbalance between revenues and spending that existed before the pandemic budget would remain, leaving an unsustainable fiscal outlook," it added.
