Ben Ritz, Director of the Progressive Policy Institute’s Center for Funding America’s Future, released the following statement on President Biden’s new budget proposal:
“With inflation still running high and the national debt on track to break its historical record as a share of economic output three years sooner than projected last year, both parties should be working together to improve our nation’s finances. We thus applaud President Biden’s decision to call for nearly $3 trillion of deficit reduction over the next decade in his Fiscal Year 2024 budget proposal to Congress — a target that’s three times as ambitious as the one he set in his proposal last year.
“However, we are concerned that this budget does not really tackle the financial challenges facing Social Security and Medicare. The budget’s proposed reforms are largely limited to improving the solvency of Medicare Part A Hospital Insurance, which only finances about 40% of Medicare spending. They do so in part by diverting savings from the other components of Medicare, such as Part D prescription drug benefits, thereby making the broader budget’s financial problems harder to solve. And the proposal makes no meaningful attempt to improve the solvency of Social Security, which faces automatic benefit cuts of over 20% when its trust funds are exhausted in roughly a decade.
“If the president’s preferred approach — one on which he hasn’t even had to try to compromise with Republicans yet — can only close part of the projected funding shortfall for 40% of the smaller of our two biggest underfunded entitlement programs, that’s a clear sign more options must be put on the table. To strengthen the foundation of American retirement security and put our budget on a more sustainable trajectory, we urge the president to reconsider his blanket opposition to benefit reforms and tax increases that may hit some folks earning under $400,000 per year.
“We also challenge House Republicans to counter the president’s proposed budget with their own vision for our fiscal future. If they continue to rule out reasonable revenue increases and heed Donald Trump’s calls to take Social Security and Medicare off the table, Republicans will have no way to produce a plausible plan for reining in the growth of our national debt. Combined with their threats for debt-limit brinkmanship, such an approach would prove the GOP to be far more fiscally irresponsible than the administration.”
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org.
Launched in 2018, PPI’s Center for Funding America’s Future works to promote a fiscally responsible public investment agenda that fosters robust and inclusive economic growth. We tackle issues of public finance in the United States and offer innovative proposals to strengthen public investments in the foundation of our economy, modernize health and retirement programs to reflect an aging society, and transform our tax code to reward work over wealth.
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Media Contact: Tommy Kaelin – tkaelin@ppionline.org
