 For more videos and people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. On March 28, US President Joe Biden unveiled its budget proposal for the fiscal year 2023. The budget has to be approved by Congress before it becomes official. The $5.8 trillion dollar plan got attention for yet another increase in military spending. According to this proposal, the military spending will be US$773 billion, which is a 4% increase from the previous year. What are the key highlights of this proposal, along with an increase in military spending? Eugene Purir of Breakthrough News explains. Yes, Biden's budget proposal, which is technically $5.8 trillion, but $1.6 trillion in what's called discretionary spending. So essentially things that are not mandated to be spent year after year like pensions and other elements like that that are sort of baked into each year's budget. So there are a number of elements of this that I think are very important. And of course, one is the major issue with the Pentagon, but there are a range of other points that I think are deeply notable and deeply related to the elections that we are going to see here in the US Congress this year, perhaps most notable being the issue of policing, but also the issue of immigration. On the issue of policing, we're seeing about $33 billion sent to bolster various police forces, which is 100% designed to push back on this idea that Democrats are quote-unquote weak on crime, but since there's no direct correlation between policing and public safety, it's doubling down on a failed strategy in order to really message to, unfortunately, some of the most racist elements of our society and an attempt to sort of look like somehow they're doing something on this issue. Also in immigration, we're seeing huge boost like $8 billion to an institution known as ICE, which is the main agency in the United States that goes after immigrants in the country and seeks to deport them and so on and so forth, which is obviously another form of messaging and a really pernicious one because there hasn't been a significant uptick in terms of the normal immigration flows into the United States. In fact, it's not even that big of a political issue right now. So it just shows once again a capitulation by the Biden administration to some of the most poisonous rhetoric that is coming from the Republican Party in order to try to position themselves vis-a-vis the midterm elections. And the sort of reverse side of that is on many of the critical issues for those who either will vote for the Democrats or at least potential voters for the Democrats were heavily shortchanged. I mean, climate change where there is, I mean, certainly being touted in the Biden administration that they're spending tens of billions of dollars. And it's hidden in different ways in the budget. Some people saying it's about $44 billion is maybe a little bit more than that. But it's certainly well short of $100 billion being spent on climate issues when by the government's own estimates, it would require trillions of dollars to meet their very own climate goals. So you see that the budget actually in its preface is talking about the climate goals of the Biden administration. But then when you look at the actual issue of how much money they're spending, they aren't even spending enough money to meet their own climate goals, which I think is deeply notable in terms of how the administration is viewing the role of the budget. And it really feels very strongly that the role of the budget is to downplay the social and economic concerns that many Democratic voters, especially the working class subset of Democratic voters are concerned with. And we saw quite a bit of the things that were proposed last year by Biden just being dropped out significantly less money for affordable housing, no conversation really about significant expansions to public health, no real conversation about significant expansions from a range of different fronts, whether it be education, whether it be childcare, we're seeing some of the things that were there last year in the Build Back Better Plan. But by and large, the budget seems to be a major, major narrowing down of that plan and a messaging bill that's designed to position the Democrats as essentially center right and primarily concerned with the same thing that the Republicans are primarily concerned with, which means a real capitulation and a real step back by the Biden administration. And, you know, in many ways you could argue rolling their own base under the bus. Another key aspect which got attention was the proposal to tax the rich. While this has been welcomed, the question remains regarding the possibility of it actually being implemented. This is due to the reluctance of both Republicans and Democrats to endorse any proposal that inconveniences the rich. What is the nature of this proposal and what are the chances of it being passed? I think the tax proposals put forward by Biden are, which are twofold, have a limited chance of succeeding, but I think that as a package will not succeed. So there's sort of two separate elements to the tax proposals. One is to create a tax on assets that was something that, you know, essentially assets are, you know, basically untaxed in the United States. I mean, there's various things, capital gains tax, if you liquidate your stocks, if you liquidate other assets, but by and large what you see is that the very rich in the United States are able to escape any form of significant taxation by keeping the majority of their wealth in the stock market and in various other sort of asset-based forms rather than in sort of income salary type income coming to them every year, which is taxed at a higher level. So this has been a long-term issue. There's been a lot of proposals on how to address this, and that is certainly a piece of what Biden is proposing. The likelihood of that seems to be almost impossible of it passing. I mean, you know, first and foremost, there are some sort of technical issues with how exactly it would be worked out, how would you determine people's assets, and so on and so forth. But beyond that, it just seems extraordinarily unlikely that there will be any real attempt to push a tax issue like this. Many things that have, you know, there's something called the carried interest loophole. I won't explain it here, but it's a similar type of tax, always proposed, never really succeeds. And we see time and time again an attempt to sort of hold assets or to take assets and to have that be a part of the taxes that the ultra-wealthy pay just continue to fail again and again and again because it is the biggest loophole for the super rich in the United States. Now, the second part of Biden's packets, which is to increase the corporate taxation rates, taxation rate from 21% to 28%, seems like it has more of a possibility to succeed. There has been, even from people like Joe Manchin, some conversation that perhaps they would support it. I still would put it in the unlikely category, but there have been so many stories about the just unbelievable tax avoidance going on from big companies like Amazon and others. I think most people have seen the huge amount of stock buybacks happening that it does seem at least somewhat possible that there could be some movement on raising the corporate taxation rate, which would still be well below, you know, where it had been for most of the entirety and most of the entirety of the 20th century. And most recently, you know, going back, let's say five or six years at 35%. So it still would be a very low tax rate by historical standards for US corporations. But I think it would be significantly higher than what we have seen over the past few years. So it does seem that the sort of twofold nature of the tax increases means that I seriously doubt the assets of the ultra-wealthy will be dented at all. But I do think it is possible that corporations will be forced to at least have a statutorily higher tax rate. But of course, we'll have to watch the loopholes because very few profitable corporations even pay the 21% tax rate where we are now because they're able to use so many different ins and outs of the tax code. And finally, a lot of attention has been paid to reducing the budget deficit. The obsession with deficits is strange at a time when many economists have called for increasing spending for the benefit of the people. Why do budget proposals continue to focus on bridging deficits? You know, it's one of the most perplexing aspects of US politics is the focus on deficits. And it really can only be put down to the power of capitalist propaganda. I mean, the United States, because of the role of the dollar and many other various things, in addition to just general sound economics, obviously could continue to run a deficit, a very large deficit and suffer really no problems at all. But the sort of political structure of the United States since you can say the 1980s, but I would really say it became a much bigger deal in the mid 1990s. There has been a consensus from both major political parties and their supporters within the economics profession that there must be a balanced budget. You're never really told exactly why there must be a balanced budget. But it's often, in fact, the only real explanations are always, well, you personally, right? You would have to keep a balanced budget because you have to be able to pay for what you want to purchase, as if like the personal finances of an individual or somehow commensurate with what's going on with the government. So it's one of those interesting factors of this sort of deep capitalist propaganda of US politics that even without any real explanation, this idea that the nation must be fiscally sound and that somehow spending more than is brought in on a year to year basis is going to undermine the foundations of the country, the quote unquote soundness of the dollar, your investments, all these sort of scare things that are thrown out there that, of course, bear no resemblance to any of the moments in history of the United States when they have run, when the country has run significant budget deficits, especially when the goal is designed to address major economic challenges of which we have seen many, many different times, perhaps most notably in World War Two in terms of just massive government spending and definite deficit spending, but certainly we've seen it at other moments in reality. Although that being said, this goes far, far back, even Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was willing to run deficits at various moments was a major, what we call deficit hawk and all about balanced budgets. So I think it's deeply related and deeply rooted in the idea of sort of capitalist businesses and capitalist propaganda that the government should not really spend that much money on working class people, on social services, and certainly they shouldn't be seeking more taxes from the capitalist class in order to do so. So a sort of cult of deficits has been built up in the United States and the need to have a balanced budget every single year, but it's deeply perplexing. It's never fully actually theorized or backed up by any facts and figures, but Biden, who comes very much from the centrist political tradition in the United States, has made that a big factor. And I will say and just add that corporate America has been attacking him very aggressively for not being notable to deficits or not being attentive to the issue of deficits and proposing too much spending for social services. So to some degree, I'm sure it's also an attempt by Biden to make the Democrats look responsible to the business community so that they don't feel they need to put all their support behind the Republicans in the elections.