Biden Budget will underline the gap with the Republicans and Trump

President Biden will propose a budget Monday packed with tax hikes on corporations and high earners, new spending on social programs and a wide range of efforts to combat high consumer costs such as housing and college tuition.

The new spending and tax increases included in the 2025 budget have virtually no chance of becoming law this year as Republicans control the House and outright oppose Biden’s budget agenda. Last week, Republicans in the House of Representatives adopted a budget proposal outlining their priorities, which are far removed from what Democrats have asked for.

Instead, the document will serve as a draft of Mr. Biden’s policy platform as he seeks reelection in November, along with a series of contrasts intended to distinguish him from his presumptive Republican opponent, former President Donald J. Trump.

Mr. Biden has been trying to regain his strength on the economic front from voters who have given him low marks amid soaring inflation. This budget aims to portray him as a champion of greater government support for workers, parents, manufacturers, retirees and students, and of the fight against climate change. Biden’s budget proposes to more than offset the costs of these priorities through higher taxes on big corporations and the wealthy. The president is already trying to portray Trump as the opposite: a supporter of further tax cuts for corporations.

“A fair tax code is how we invest in the things that make this country great: health care, education, defense and so much more,” Biden said during his State of the Union address on Thursday.

Later in the speech, in a call-and-response with Democrats in the House, Mr. Biden added: “Folks at home, does anyone really think the tax code is fair? Do you really think the rich and big corporations need another $2 trillion tax break? Certainly not. I will continue to fight hard to make it fair.”

Polls show Americans are dissatisfied with Mr. Biden’s handling of the economy and favor Mr. Trump’s approach to economic issues. But Mr. Biden has been steadfast in his core economic policy strategy, and the budget is not expected to deviate from that plan.

White House officials said in previewing the budget release that Biden would propose about $3 trillion in new measures to reduce the budget deficit over the next decade. That’s in line with his budget proposal last year, which reduced deficits by raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy and having the government negotiate more aggressively with pharmaceutical companies to reduce spending on prescription drugs.

Mr. Biden will again call for an increase in the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent, the level Trump set in the tax bill he signed in late 2017. Mr. Biden will also propose raising a new minimum tax on large corporations and quadrupling a tax on stock buybacks, among other efforts to raise more revenue from companies and individuals making more than $400,000 a year.

These cuts would build on the discretionary spending limits that Biden and Republicans in Congress agreed to last year to resolve an impasse over raising the nation’s borrowing limit. But even if Congress were to agree to all of Biden’s $3 trillion proposals, the deficit would still average about $1.7 trillion per year over the next decade, based on forecasts from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Republicans in the House of Representatives released a budget last week that aims to reduce deficits much faster – bringing the budget to a balanced position by the end of the decade. Their savings were based on economic growth forecasts well above the expectations of mainstream forecasters, along with steep and often unspecified budget cuts.

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget called the Republican plan “unrealistic in its assumptions and results.” Last year, the same group said Biden’s budget “fell far short of the deficit reduction needed to put the nation on a sustainable fiscal path.”

Mr. Biden and his aides have repeatedly said they are confident the projected deficits in his budgets will not hurt the economy. Rather than focusing on more aggressive deficit reduction, as previous Democratic presidents have done after losing control of a chamber of Congress, Mr. Biden has focused on the need for new spending programs and targeted fiscal stimulus.

White House officials said the new budget proposal would continue that trend. It will include a national paid leave program for workers. It will restore an expanded child tax credit that Mr. Biden temporarily created in his $1.9 trillion 2021 economic stimulus law, which helped significantly reduce child poverty in the span of a year before it expired.

It will also include new efforts to help Americans grapple with high costs. That issue has dogged Mr. Biden among voters since inflation rose to the highest level in four decades on his watch, even as price increases have cooled over the past year. Mr. Biden previewed many of these efforts in his State of the Union address, including new tax breaks for certain homebuyers and expanded help for people to get health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.

Mr. Biden will also call for new efforts to improve the solvency of Social Security and Medicare, but not the full overhaul of Social Security that he previewed in the 2020 campaign but failed to deliver during his term realised. He will oppose benefit cuts for the programs, officials said, suggesting he favors a familiar strategy to strengthen them: raising taxes on high earners.