The Biden administration’s first budget will be clarifying when it is finally unveiled. Rarely has so much consequential tax and spending policy been up for grabs, with the potential for large swings in fiscal outcomes. While some uncertainty at the beginning of a presidency is normal, the range of possible paths forward is unusually wide as the country emerges from an historically difficult crisis. The forthcoming budget will answer many important questions if it is presented honestly.
While federal law requires the president to deliver a fiscal blueprint to Congress by the first Monday in February, it is normal in the first year of a presidency for the administration to delay the submission. President Obama sent his first budget to Congress in May 2009.
In the past two decades, presidents’ budgets have become less relevant. They regularly contain proposals that neither the administration nor Congress take seriously. That was certainly the case in the Trump years. The former president cared little about deficits and debt, and it showed. He was known to criticize proposals that were in his own plan if he discovered Democrats in Congress were supporting them too.
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