WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden sees funding for crime prevention as a spot the place the White Home and congressional Republicans might discover settlement, Shalanda Younger, the director of the Workplace of Administration and Price range, mentioned in an interview.
“We expect there’s completely room to have bipartisan legislative accomplishments from items he’s presenting on this finances,” Younger mentioned. “One factor that involves thoughts is safer communities. It shouldn’t be controversial, it must be bipartisan, to agree that we must always have extra cops on the beat on this nation.”
Biden laid out his spending priorities Thursday within the third finances proposal of his presidency.
And whereas lots of the president’s proposals are nonstarters for Republicans, there are a number of areas through which the White Home sees potential for bipartisan settlement, together with rail security and crime prevention, Younger mentioned.
Home Republicans are anticipated to launch their finances subsequent month, a transfer that might kickstart extra severe discussions with the White Home. Biden has, thus far, met simply as soon as with Home Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who has known as for cuts in spending and a deal with deficit discount.
Younger described Biden’s plan to cut back the deficit by $3 trillion, which he would obtain by elevating taxes that Republicans oppose on companies and rich People, as “the start of a dialogue.”
The president’s finances additionally consists of elevated funding for rail security — $1.5 billion for rail security enchancment grants, for example — Younger mentioned, as considerations concerning the situation mount following derailment final month in East Palestine, Ohio.
“And it simply doesn’t cease on the finances,” Younger mentioned. “We need to work with Congress on bipartisan laws to make it possible for these railroads are working safely by these communities. This could not occur on this nation.”
The White Home emphasis on the president’s finances has shifted this yr as Biden is predicted to announce a 2024 re-election bid. Notably, the White Home reality sheet on the finances, a abstract of the 182-page doc, emphasizes some politically charged points that weren’t talked about within the one distributed final yr, together with Medicare, Social Safety, Republican positions, border safety and immigration.
In one other shift from Biden’s earlier budgets, the one this yr doesn’t allocate funds particularly for combatting Covid-19. As an alternative, Biden is requesting $20 billion for pandemic preparedness broadly.
On the similar time, the president is asking for extra funds to take care of the southern border, together with a proposal for a $4.7 billion contingency fund that’s designed to permit Customs and Border Safety and ICE to entry the cash relying on migration flows on the border.
“We’re saying to Congress, give us instruments, triggers, so if migration patterns change, cash is launched in order that we will adequately handle the border,” Younger mentioned
Whereas the White Home sees the president’s finances as a gap salvo in negotiations on federal spending, Biden is sustaining his hard-line place that he gained’t negotiate with Congress over elevating the debt restrict to cowl cash the federal government has already spent.
The U.S. is predicted to achieve the present restrict in August and would default on its debt if Congress doesn’t go laws to extend that quantity.
Requested if she will be able to assure the U.S. is not going to default, Younger declined to take action.
“We’d like Congress to do its obligation to make it possible for doesn’t occur,” she mentioned. “That’s the reason this president has been crystal clear that there’s a time and a spot to speak concerning the appropriations course of spending. We try this yearly. … What we must always not do is tank the U.S. financial system, the worldwide financial system, by enjoying politics.”
