U.S. President Joe Biden’s $6 trillion budget: Social spending, taxes on business

Joe Biden inherited record pandemic-stoked spending and won a major victory on COVID-19 relief earlier this year.

President Joe Biden on Saturday unveiled a $6 trillion budget for next year that’s piled high with new safety net programs for the poor and middle class, but his generosity depends on taxing corporations and the wealthy to keep the nation’s spiking debt from spiralling totally out of control. Mr. Biden inherited record pandemic-stoked spending and won a major victory on COVID-19 relief earlier this year. Saturday’s rollout adds his recently announced infrastructure and social spending initiatives and fleshes out his earlier plans to sharply increase spending for annual Cabinet budgets. This year’s projected deficit would set a new record of $3.7 trillion that would drop to $1.8 trillion next year — still almost double pre-pandemic levels. The national debt will soon breach $30 trillion after more than $5 trillion in already approved COVID-19 relief. As a result, the government must borrow roughly 50 cents of every dollar it spends this year and next.