WASHINGTON – Six days after his inauguration, President Biden vowed that his administration would see everything through the lens of racial equality and make it the “business of the entire government.”
On Friday, his $ 6 trillion budget began delivering on that promise.
Spread across the President’s enormous spending plan are tens of billions of dollars worth of programs specifically designed to strengthen the fortunes of blacks, Asians, tribal communities, and other historically underserved groups in the United States.
Mr Biden is not the first President to spend money on such programs. And civil rights activists said the budget released on Friday fell short on some critical areas like student loans, where they say more money is needed to address a longstanding lack of fairness and a one-sided burden on minorities.
“It’s going in the right direction, but it’s not a perfect document,” said Derrick Johnson, the NAACP president, who was disappointed that the president’s budget did not include the repayment of student loan debt, which falls disproportionately to black Americans.
But he added that his organization was pleased that the president “continued to meet one of his priorities”.
This idea of paying special attention to the distribution of taxpayers’ money among racial groups has never been approached as methodically as this year, according to supporters of Mr Biden. When asked about the President’s equity agenda on Friday, Shalanda Young, acting President’s Budget Director, said her department “built” this into the overall spending plan by “giving our agencies” clear instructions that they should use this lens in their implementation these programs are supposed to. “
“This is not something we have to shout,” she said. “This is something that should be ubiquitous in how the government does its business.”
Much of the president’s huge budget goes into expenditures that aren’t explicitly split by race: health care, education, military, transportation, agriculture, retirement planning, and foreign affairs, among others.
However, across all of these programs, Mr. Biden’s team has suggested higher spending to ensure people with color and others who are often left behind get a bigger share of the total cake.
Among the large and small budget items determined by equity:
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$ 3 Billion to Reduce Maternal Mortality and Eliminate Racial Disparity in Maternal Mortality.
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$ 15 billion for Highways to Neighborhoods, a program to reconnect neighborhoods that were cut off by infrastructure projects developed decades ago.
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$ 900 million to fund tribal efforts to expand affordable housing.
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$ 936 million for an initiative to accelerate environmental and economic justice for the Environmental Protection Agency.
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$ 110 million for a Thriving Communities initiative to promote transportation equity through grants to underserved communities.
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$ 39 billion in student grants for low- and middle-income students who historically attend black colleges and universities, as well as students who serve other minorities.
Mr Biden predicted these kinds of budget decisions in his early days in office. In a speech announcing his “justice agenda,” the president said he was determined to go further than his predecessors in addressing groups he said had been left behind too often.
“We have to open America’s promise to every American,” he said during the January 26 speech. “And that means that we don’t have to make the issue of racial justice an issue for just one government department.”
This approach has angered the Conservatives, who accuse the president and his advisors of pursuing a racist agenda against white Americans. Fox News hit the headlines accusing Mr. Biden of trying “to fuel the nationwide division with a ‘racial equity’ push”. And the New York Post published an editorial, “In Push for Woke ‘Equity’, Biden Abandon’s Equality,” accusing the president of being “un-American.”
A group called America First Legal, led by Stephen Miller and Mark Meadows, two top aides to former President Donald J. Trump, received an injunction from a Texas judge this week against Mr. Biden’s efforts by the Small Business Administration Prioritize grants from the $ 28.6 billion Restaurant Revitalization Fund to businesses that belong to minority or underserved groups.
Updated
May 28, 2021, 4:32 p.m. ET
“This ruling is another powerful blow to the Biden government’s unconstitutional decision to select winners and losers based on skin color,” the group said in a statement.
The President is unlikely to back down. Speaking days after his inauguration, he vowed that “every component of the White House and every agency will be involved in this work because promoting justice must be everyone’s business.”
Despite all of Mr. Biden’s energetic rhetoric – he once promised to “no longer allow a narrow, cramped view of this nation’s promise to fester” – his government made little effort on Friday to draw attention to this principle or to highlight details about it how a stock-driven approach would change the way the government spends its money.
Biden’s 2022 budget
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- A new year, a new budget: Fiscal year 2022 for the federal government begins October 1, and President Biden has announced what he plans to spend from that point on. However, all editions require the approval of both Congress Chambers.
- Ambitious overall spending: President Biden wants the federal government to spend $ 6 trillion in fiscal 2022 and total spending to rise to $ 8.2 trillion by 2031. This would bring the United States to its highest sustainable federal spending level since World War II, while running deficits above $ 1.3 trillion for the next decade.
- Infrastructure plan: The budget describes the President’s desired first year of investment in his US employment plan, which aims to fund improvements to roads, bridges, public transportation and more with a total of $ 2.3 billion over eight years.
- Family plan: The budget also addresses the other major spending proposal that Biden has already put forward, his American family plan, which aims to strengthen the United States’ social safety net by expanding access to education, reducing childcare costs, and bringing women in the workforce are supported.
- Compulsory programs: As usual, mandatory spending on programs like Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare is a significant part of the proposed budget. They grow as the American population ages.
- Discretionary issues: Funding for each agency and executive program budget would reach approximately $ 1.5 trillion in 2022, a 16 percent increase from the previous budget.
- How Biden would pay for it: The president would fund his agenda largely through tax hikes for businesses and high earners, which would lead to a decline in budget deficits in the 2030s. Administration officials said tax increases would fully offset plans for jobs and families over the course of 15 years, which the budget request confirms. In the meantime, the budget deficit would stay above $ 1.3 trillion each year.
During a press conference on the introduction of the budget on Friday, Ms. Young and Cecilia Rouse, the chairmen of the White House National Economic Council – both black women – did not mention the president’s equity agenda until a reporter asked about it.
And the budget itself does not seek to quantify the impact of following the presidential instructions in order to make decisions based on a sense of racial justice. There is no “Equity” section in the budget. Aides did not send newsletters to reporters on Friday promoting the “equity spending” in the president’s opening budget.
That left some outreach to civil rights groups and other advocates, who were quick to point out examples of spending that would benefit communities traditionally left behind by previous presidents.
Sara Chieffo, chief lobbyist for the League of Conservation Voters, an environmental group, referred to the Environmental Protection Agency’s $ 936 million initiative to accelerate environmental and economic justice, which aims to clean up the environment in underserved communities .
“The importance of this government’s proposal to make the largest ever investment in color communities and low-income communities that have been exposed to environmental racism for decades cannot be emphasized enough,” said Chieffo.
Marcela Howell, President of In Our Own Voice: National Reproductive Justice Agenda for Black Women, commended the president for investing in programs that specifically benefit black women.
“Kudos also go to President Biden for funding important programs to combat racial justice and economic security,” she said in a statement, adding that “we are making the proposed investments in infrastructure and job creation, affordable childcare and education of workers as well as education “. and more.
The Planned Parenthood Federation of America issued a statement thanking Mr. Biden for what the group called “important investments” that would help “address the maternal mortality crisis and its devastating effects on color communities.”
