Biden delivers 2025 budget; House GOP hasn’t passed 2024 budget.
March 12, 2024
On Monday, President Biden delivered his 2025 budget proposal to Congress. The 2025 budget highlights important priorities in an election year and deserves attention from every American and news outlet. As expected, news outlets and headline writers began tussling over the “takeaways” from the budget proposal in an effort to “spin” the priorities in the budget. Don’t fall for the disinformation.
Instead, read the budget for yourself (or at least parts of it): Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2025 (whitehouse.gov).
President Biden included a summary letter (pages 1-3) and an “executive summary” (pages 5-14). If you merely scroll through those two resources, you will inform and educate yourself about the actual proposals by President Biden. Importantly, the introductory pages to the 2025 budget outline the Biden administration’s accomplishments to date. Keep it handy for future discussions with persuadable friends and neighbors.
The proposed budget, if adopted, would:
Reduce the deficit by $3 trillion over the next ten years
Increase taxes on corporations, millionaires, and billionaires
Protect Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid
Protect and expand the Affordable Healthcare Act
Invest in women’s health research
Defend and protect reproductive rights and healthcare
Ensure access to mental healthcare
Provide funding to fight the overdose epidemic
Support K-12 education
Support veterans, their families,
And much more . . .
The Republican response was bizarre and delusional. Trump chose Monday to promise (again) that Republicans would “cut” Social Security and Medicare. (“[T]here’s a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting and in terms of the theft and the bad management of entitlements.”)
Although Trump tried to “walk back” that statement, Trump has repeatedly advocated cutting Social Security and Medicare. See this montage of video clips of Trump calling for cutting Social Security and Medicare. See also Philip Bump in WaPo, Donald Trump stumbles onto the third rail: Social Security reform
The Republican congressional caucus released a “fantasy budget” as an alternative to Biden’s budget. The NYTimes described the GOP fantasy budget as follows:
House Republicans released a budget last week that seeks to reduce deficits much faster — balancing the budget by the end of the decade. Their savings relied on economic growth forecasts that are well above mainstream forecasters’ expectations, along with steep and often unspecified spending cuts.
Got that? The Republican “fantasy budget” is based on unrealistic growth projections and unspecified spending cuts. It’s easy to come up with a balanced budget if you rely on unspecified cuts and imaginary revenue from unrealistic economic assumptions. President Biden has delivered a real budget protecting the heard-earned benefits due to the American people while cutting deficits.
Do not allow anyone to tell you that Republicans have proposed an alternative budget that delivers tax cuts and a balanced budget. They have not! They are engaged in a con game—and you are their mark!
Indeed, the GOP-controlled house has not yet passed the 2024 budget, so it is hypocritical for them to be proposing a 2025 fantasy budget when they have forced the nation to lurch from crisis to crisis. The GOP’s inability to perform the most fundamental task assigned to Congress by the Constitution is inexcusable.
For additional background and detail, see The Guardian, Biden denounces Trump for $2tn tax cuts as he unveils budget plan.
Special counsel Robert Hur to testify before Congress on Tuesday.
Special counsel Robert Hur will testify before Congress on Tuesday at 10:00 AM. Republicans wanted Hur to testify because he included gratuitous attacks on President Biden’s memory and age in his report. Those concerns were quashed during last week’s State of the Union address when President Biden outwitted the entire Republican congressional caucus.
Because the age and memory issues will have much less sting on Tuesday, we should expect Democrats to use the hearing to highlight Hur’s analysis comparing Trump's intentional refusal to return national defense documents with Biden’s innocent retention and voluntary return of the documents.
The White House is rightfully angry at Merrick Garland for bungling another sensitive matter because he is always placing the “reputation” of the DOJ above the pursuit of justice. See WaPo, White House-Justice Dept. tensions high as Hur prepares to testify on Hill (Accessible to all.)
Trump would abandon Ukraine by cutting off aid, according to Viktor Orban
According to a service that monitors Russian media, Viktor Orbán has told Russia that Trump's plan to “end the Russia-Ukraine war” is simple: Stop payments to Ukraine. See Russia Celebrates as Orban Says Trump Will Force Ukraine to Surrender to Putin - MeidasTouch Network.
See also, The Hill, Orbán says Trump won’t give ‘a penny’ to Ukraine after Mar-a-Lago meeting.
Just to be clear, Trump has repeatedly claimed he could “end” Russia’s war against Ukraine in 24 hours. It is now clear that Trump's “peace plan” is to allow Russia to defeat Ukraine with the complicity of the US.
If Trump made such a promise to Orbán, it is a further sign of Trump's plan to act as a dictator if he is elected. No president has the unilateral power to impound funding appropriated by Congress, except on narrowly defined conditions and for a limited time. See The Impoundment Control Act of 1974: What Is It? Why Does It Matter? | House Budget Committee Democrats.
Trump moved documents from Mar-a-Lago to Bedminster the day the DOJ visited Mar-a-Lago in search of documents.
CNN broke an important story about Trump employees moving documents from Mar-a-Lago to his Bedminster golf resort the day the DOJ showed up at Mar-a-Lago looking for documents. Lucian K. Truscott IV covers this story in detail, so I recommend you check out this story on Lucian’s Substack post, Revealed: Boxes of documents we didn't know Trump took from Mar a Lago to Bedminster.
Trump's surrogates gut the Republican National Committee in mass firings two days after takeover.
Proving that the Republican Party has ceased to exist, Trump's surrogates on the RNC have gutted the central GOP governing committee through mass lay-offs on Monday. See CNN, RNC lays off dozens of staffers days after Trump’s team takes over.
As CNN explained, the layoffs seem to relate to fundraising and ground operations for the 2024 election. According to CNN, the RNC has had one of the worst fundraising cycles in its history. That could be the fault of the RNC staff, or it could be because Trump's candidacy is driving people away.
Rebuilding the RNC in the middle of a presidential campaign will be a difficult task. Is Trump simply trying to make it easier to pocket the money currently controlled by the RNC? Or ensuring that every Republican is beholden to him for money from the national organization? Either way, it is another step in the dissolution of the Republican Party as a functional political party.
Opportunities for Reader engagement.
For those attending the Zoom on Tuesday, March 12, that I will be hosting for N.C. candidate for state Attorney General, Jeff Jackson, please note: Because Rep. Jackson must attend a floor vote in the House, the start time of the Zoom has been moved to 7:00 p.m. Eastern / 4:00 p.m. Pacific. You should have received an updated notice from the event organizers.
Also, you may want to check out Jeff Jackson’s Substack site, Quick Update | Jeff Jackson | Substack. In his latest post, Rep. Jeff Jackson describes what it was like to be on the House floor during President Biden’s State of the Union address!
Concluding Thoughts.
I frequently hear political consultants on MSNBC (looking at you, David Plouffe) say things like, “A few thousand voters in a handful of swing states will decide the 2024 election.” I also hear similar formulations from readers who are anxious about the 2024 presidential election. Usually, that statement is coupled with fears that the narrow margin will increase the likelihood of election interference by Republicans.
It is neither helpful nor true to say that the 2024 presidential election will be decided by a “few thousand voters in a handful of swing states”—and I urge Democrats to stop repeating that statement.
Even if that statement were true (it is not), the formulation might mislead people in non-battleground states into believing that their votes do not matter. The takeaway from the “handful of voters” view could send the false message to voters in non-battleground states, “Don’t bother voting; the next president will be elected by 50,000 people in three states.”
That’s not a good message to increase turnout. We need strong turnout in deep red states to win school board seats, city council seats, county commissioners, state legislators, etc. Non-battleground states—even red states—matter A LOT in the upcoming election regardless of which presidential candidate wins the state’s electoral ballots.
Moreover, the statement simply isn’t true—especially this year. Reproductive liberty amendments are on the ballot in a handful of red states. Who knows what might happen if millions of Republican women and men vote to protect reproductive liberty? When they are voting with Democrats on the issue of reproductive liberty, they might think twice about voting for a candidate who supports a nationwide abortion ban. Biden might win in a red state despite expectations to the contrary—but only if blue voters in red states show up en masse. Do not discourage them by telling them their votes will not be decisive in the presidential election!
Finally, imagine two scenarios. In the first, Joe Biden wins in the Electoral College by a 74-vote margin (as he did in 2020) but wins by the popular vote by only one million votes. Compare that to a scenario in which Joe Biden secures by the same 74-vote victory in the Electoral College but wins the popular vote by a fifteen million vote margin! Which outcome would result in a more secure, less contested election?
Identical outcomes in the Electoral College (e.g., a 74-vote margin of victory) with significantly different popular vote margins could be viewed as fundamentally different outcomes by the American people.
Every vote counts without regard to where it is cast.
That does not mean we should not focus energy and resources on strategic races that could flip either way. We must be smart and savvy in how we allocate resources. But decisions regarding resource allocation are fundamentally different from saying we need every voter in every state to show up to vote. Don’t conflate resource allocation and voter turnout by repeating bromides peddled by political consultants to justify their hefty fees.
Every vote counts without regard to where it is cast. Tell a friend!
Talk to you tomorrow!
Extra credit: Click on the link to the 2025 budget document above, and search (Control-F) for “Hubbell.”
For those of you who took the Extra Credit Quiz, Julia Bickett Hubbell is my youngest daughter.
Thank you for another keen insight "I'm looking at you David Plouffe"- that notion that this election will be decided by a handful of people in battleground states makes me sick, and as you so perfectly pointed out takes away from down ballot voting. As a women, my freedom has been taken away in many states, as a USA citizen, I fear daily gun violence killing my friends and family at any given time in any given place. We are NOT safe with Republicans. We need a HUGE Democratic turnout - not just Biden to win.