Progressive Democrats have welcomed large chunks of Joe Biden’s latest budget request, but there is also anger and disappointment on key issues that the left of the party holds dear, notably defense spending and immigration policy.
On Thursday, the president outlined his vision for the next fiscal year, proposing a total budget of $6.8tn, which would decrease the federal deficit by nearly $3tn through a series of tax increases on corporations and the wealthiest Americans.
“For too long, working people have been breaking their necks, but the economy has left them behind,” Biden said in Philadelphia on Thursday. “My budget is going to give working people a fighting chance.”
Biden’s proposal has little chance of passage in the Republican-controlled House, but presidents’ budget requests are carefully scutinized as a reflection of their administration’s principles and priorities. If this proposal reflects Biden’s principles, progressives say, then his political vision could use some tinkering.
Progressives celebrated Biden’s commitment to ensuring corporations and high earners pay their “fair share” of taxes, praising the president’s plan to use that tax revenue to lower healthcare and childcare costs for working Americans.
But when it comes to Biden’s proposed immigration policies and his suggestion to once again increase the Pentagon’s budget, progressives are less than thrilled.
“This is an agenda that the American people can be proud to have voted for – and that progressive movements can feel proud to have fought for,” said Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “There are also a few places where we need to do better and ensure record levels of funding come alongside real accountability, particularly for immigration and defense.”
On the question of defense spending, Biden has asked Congress to allocate $842bn to the Pentagon, representing a $26bn increase compared with the current fiscal year and a hike of nearly $100bn since fiscal year 2022. If approved, the funding allocation would represent the Pentagon’s largest annual budget in its history.
The secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, praised the proposal, saying: “The president’s budget request provides the resources necessary to address the pacing challenge from China, address advanced and persistent threats, accelerate innovation and modernization, and ensure operational resiliency amidst our changing climate.”
But Biden’s request dismayed Jayapal and other progressives, who have spent years demanding cuts to the Pentagon’s budget. They note that the Pentagon failed another audit in November, marking the fifth consecutive year that the agency was unable to account for its spending.
Stephen Miles, president of the progressive group Win Without War, described Biden’s defense spending request as “disappointing but not surprising”.
“We’re seeing levels of spending that just defy any sort of rational understanding, and it’s time for a different course,” Miles said. “They’re still failing their audit and getting rewarded for that with ever more money.”
Miles also expressed skepticism of Austin’s argument that the Pentagon’s budgetary increase was “necessary to address the pacing challenge from the People’s Republic of China”.
“People who want a larger Pentagon budget always have another reason. For a long time it was terrorism. Obviously for a long time it was the Soviet Union. Now it’s China,” Miles said. “The fact of the matter is, though, that the challenges we face with China, while real, are not all going to be solved by throwing more money at the Pentagon.”
Progressives were similarly dismayed to see Biden request more money for border security, with Jayapal warning that the president’s proposal threatened to “penalize immigrants who are central to our economy’s functioning”.
In his request, Biden allocated nearly $25bn to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), marking an increase of almost $800m from the current fiscal year.
In addition to the requested increase in funding for CBP and Ice, Biden has also proposed the creation of a new $4.7bn contingency fund to assist the Department of Homeland Security with “responding to migration surges along the southwest border”.
Defund Hate, a coalition of immigrant rights groups co-led by United We Dream, said such a policy would amount to a “slush fund for DHS, effectively handing the agency a blank check to carry out recent policy shifts advocates are decrying the administration for considering, like reinstating family detention and extreme bans on asylum”.
“President Biden’s budget proposal recklessly pumps more money into immigration enforcement agencies that wrongly demonize, criminalize, and abuse immigrant and border communities,” Defund Hate said in its statement.
Biden’s budget announcement comes amid a series of clashes with immigrants’ rights advocates over his efforts to address the recent rise in attempted crossings at the US-Mexican border.
Immigrant rights groups fiercely criticized Biden over reports that he was considering resuming the detention of migrant families along the US-Mexican border, a policy he suspended when he took office as part of his efforts to build a more humane immigration system. Biden has also sought to restrict who can seek asylum when entering the US, leading to threats of lawsuits from civil rights groups.
The president’s proposal to increase funding for immigration enforcement along the border appears to have added more fuel to those groups’ criticism.
“President Biden’s budget should not inject billions of dollars into failed deterrence policies that punish people for exercising their legal right to seek safety in the United States,” said Kica Matos, executive vice-president of programs and strategy for the National Immigration Law Center. “Instead, it should reflect his promises to uphold asylum rights and finish the work of building a fair and humane immigration system.”
Progressives fear that the final budget will only become more conservative as Biden negotiates with House Republicans, who have already demanded significant cuts in government funding. As Democrats prepare for those negotiations, Miles urged the party’s leaders to defend the interests of the voters who elected them.
“What I would like to see Democrats do is fight for Democratic priorities and start with what they want, instead of starting negotiation with where they think it’ll end up,” he said. “Because if that’s what they do, which is what they often do, we’re going to end up in a really bad place.”
