White House to propose $6 trillion budget for 2022

The White House on Friday will propose a $6 trillion budget for the 2022 fiscal year, a senior administration official tells CNN, as President Joe Biden prepares to outline his spending blueprint for the first time in his formal request to Congress.

The budget proposal calls for the most sustained spending in more than a half-century, which forecasts deficits at more than $1 trillion for at least the next decade. The budget proposed by the White House is the President’s opening offer to Congress in negotiations over the federal budget and is expected to change before being signed into law.

Congressional Republicans are already sounding the alarm about the Biden administration’s spending plan and deficits — a point they rarely discussed during the Trump administration — as the question of the size and scope of economic recovery looms large in Washington.

The budget proposal, which will be submitted on Friday, calls for spending to increase to more than $8 trillion by 2031.

The President has already outlined two sweeping proposals — the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan — to remake the social safety net in the US. The budget fills in some of the gaps, but also highlights the projected deficit.

The New York Times was first to report the budget proposal.

The budget proposal will come as negotiations intensify over a bipartisan deal on Biden’s large-scale infrastructure and jobs proposal. Senate Republicans on Thursday made a $928 billion counteroffer, which still falls short of the $1 trillion that Senate Republicans said Biden was open to during their White House negotiations. The President initially proposed a $2.25 trillion infrastructure plan to rebuild the nation’s crumbling infrastructure and shift the nation over to greener energy.

The new GOP offer, which would invest significantly less than Biden’s proposal, includes $506 billion for roads, bridges and major projects; $98 billion for public transit systems; $46 billion for passenger and freight rail; $21 billion for safety; $22 billion for ports and waterways; $56 billion for airports; $22 billion for western water storage; $72 billion for water infrastructure; $65 billion for broadband infrastructure; and $20 billion for infrastructure financing, according to a document obtained by CNN.

Biden will travel to Cleveland on Thursday to deliver what White House officials are calling a “major” economic speech at a critical moment in the negotiations. Biden will argue that the country faces an “economic inflection point” and that there is an opportunity to “rebuild our economy and capitalize on the momentum of the last four months and breathe new life into the middle class,” according to a White House official.

Mike Donilon, senior adviser to Biden and one of his closest aides, made the case for Biden’s sweeping proposals in a memo to allies on Thursday and said: “As we turn the page on this dark chapter in America’s history, we stand at an inflection point about what kind of economy — and country — we want for ourselves and for future generations.”

“The American people understand that the economy we had before the pandemic left far too many people behind, and that more and more families were finding that their grip on a middle class life — and the security it affords — was precarious. They know we can’t afford to simply turn the clock back to where we were,” Donilon said.

In addition to the American Jobs Plan, the President has put forward a $1.8 trillion American Families Plan, a massive package that would invest in education, childcare and paid family leave. The President intends to finance that package by hiking taxes on the rich, saying he wants to reward work, not wealth.

The two packages are aimed at helping the nation’s economic recovery in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Biden’s economic speech Thursday will be at Cuyahoga Community College, which is the site of the last rally Biden was scheduled to hold when he was running for president in March 2020 before the pandemic shut down the nation, according to a White House official.

Biden is expected to highlight on Thursday how far the country has come in its response to the pandemic, as 50% of American adults are now fully vaccinated against Covid-19.

This story has been updated with additional information.