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    States and Cities Scramble to Spend $350 Billion Stimulus

    The Biden administration is betting on the funds to keep the recovery humming, but Republicans say the money is being wasted.WASHINGTON — When Steve Adler, the mayor of Austin, heard the Biden administration planned to give billions of dollars to states and localities in the $1.9 trillion pandemic aid package, he knew exactly what he wanted to do with his cut.The remarkable growth of the Texas capital, fueled by a technology boom, has long been shadowed by a rise in homelessness, so local officials had already cobbled together $200 million for a program to help Austin’s 3,200 homeless people. When the relief package passed this spring, the city government quickly steered 40 percent of its take, about $100 million, to fortify that effort.“The inclination is to spread money around like peanut butter, so that you help out a lot of people who need relief,” Mr. Adler, a Democrat, said in an interview. “But nobody really gets all that they need when you do that.” The mayor of Austin, Steve Adler, steered $100 million of pandemic relief funding to initiatives that help the homeless population.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesThe stimulus package that President Biden signed into law in March was intended to stabilize state and city finances drained by the coronavirus crisis, providing $350 billion to alleviate the pandemic’s effect, with few restrictions on how the money could be used.Three months after its passage, cash is starting to flow — $194 billion so far, according to the Treasury Department — and officials are devoting funds to a range of efforts, including keeping public service workers on the payroll, helping the fishing industry, improving broadband access and aiding the homeless.“It’s not like all places are rushing out to do the most aspirational things, since the first thing they need to do is replace lost revenue,” said Mark Muro, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan Washington think tank. “But there is much more flexibility in this program than in previous stimulus packages, so there is more potential for creativity.”The local decisions are taking on greater national urgency as the Biden administration negotiates with Republicans in Congress over a bipartisan infrastructure package. Some Republican lawmakers want money from previous relief packages to be repurposed to pay for infrastructure, arguing that many states are in far better financial shape than expected and the money should be put to better use.The administration, sensitive to those concerns, has begun bending the program’s rules to allow the money to be spent even more broadly. In May, the Treasury Department told states they could use their funding to pay for lotteries intended to encourage vaccinations. In June, President Biden prodded local governments to consider using the cash to address the recent rise in violent crime, which his aides regard as a serious political hazard heading into the 2022 midterm elections.For the most part, local officials have been focused on undoing the damage of the past year and a half.Maine officials are looking to spend $16 billion to bolster the fishing industry, which is facing a combination of lobster shortages and hungry consumers, flush with money after more than a year in lockdown. Alaska is already pouring cash into its fishing sector.In North Carolina, the concerns are more terrestrial: The governor wants to direct $45 million in relief funds to the motor sports sector, which took a hit when the pandemic halted NASCAR.Maine officials are looking to spend $16 billion to bolster the fishing industry, which is facing a combination of lobster shortages and hungry consumers, flush with money after more than a year in lockdown.Greta Rybus for The New York TimesIn conservative-leaning states like Wyoming that did not incur major budget deficits during the coronavirus, officials have been freed to spend much of their cash on infrastructure improvements, especially rural broadband.Places like Orange County, Calif., that poured significant funding into fighting the spread of the pandemic are using a lot of their money to pay for huge community vaccination campaigns. And the midsize cities that make up the county — Irvine, Garden Grove and Anaheim — are directing most of their $715 million to plug virus-ravaged budgets.Last week, New York City passed its largest budget ever, about $99 billion, bolstered by $14 billion in federal pandemic aid that will be used in nearly every facet of the city’s finances, like an infusion of cash needed to cover budget gaps and an array of new programs, including youth job initiatives, college scholarships and a $1 billion backup fund for health emergencies.Local officials, especially Democrats, have tried to leverage at least some of the windfall to address chronic social and economic problems that the coronavirus exacerbated.After a series of community meetings in Detroit, Mayor Mike Duggan and the City Council opted for a plan that divided the city’s $826 million payout roughly in half, with about $400 million going to recoup Covid-19 losses, and $426 million to an array of job-creation programs, grants for home repairs and funding to revitalize blighted neighborhoods.In Philadelphia, officials are considering using $18 million of the new aid to test a “universal basic income” pilot program to help poor people. That is among the uses specifically suggested in the administration’s guidance. Several other big cities, including Chicago, are considering similar plans.The Cherokee Nation, which is receiving $1.8 billion of the $20 billion set aside for tribal governments, is replicating the law’s signature initiative — direct cash payments to citizens — by sending $2,000 checks to around 400,000 members of the tribe in multiple states.The $350 billion program has led to legal battles, with officials in many Republican-led states fighting one of the few restrictions placed on use of the money, a prohibition against deploying it to subsidize tax cuts, and partisan clashes erupting over which projects should have been given priority.And the cash has spawned partisan conflict. Gov. Mark Gordon of Wyoming, a Republican, announced this month that the state would use only a fraction of the approximately $1 billion it was expected to receive on emergency expenditures this year, and would discuss how to use the rest.“These are dollars borrowed by Congress from many generations yet to come,” he said in a statement this spring.The idea of the federal government distributing such vast sums has been charged from the start. Republican lawmakers successfully blocked a large state and local package during the Trump administration, denouncing it as a “blue-state bailout” that helped fiscally-irresponsible local governments.Not a single Republican in either house of Congress voted for the bill. Yet the vast majority of officials from conservative states have welcomed the aid without much fuss. In general, Republican governors and agency officials have tilted toward financing economic development and infrastructure improvements, particularly for upgrading broadband in rural areas, rather than funding social programs.When the administration updates the guidance for the funding this summer, they are likely to loosen the restrictions on internet-related projects at the behest of Republican state officials, a senior White House official said.One of the most ambitious plans in the nation is being formulated by Indiana, a Republican-controlled state that is using $500 million of the stimulus money for projects aimed at stemming the decades-long exodus of workers from postindustrial towns and cities.“It’s huge — it’s found money — nobody thought it was going to be there,” said Luke Bosso, the chief of staff at the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, which has been working on the effort for years. Cleveland-Cliffs steel mill in Burns Harbor, Ind. Indiana is using its stimulus funds on projects aimed at stemming the exodus of workers from postindustrial towns and cities. Taylor Glascock for The New York TimesWhile lawmakers in Washington debate the scope of a new infrastructure bill this year, the package that passed in March already represents a major down payment for a variety of infrastructure projects.Christy McFarland, the research director of the National League of Cities, said that many cities across the country were preparing to put money into infrastructure projects that had been delayed by the pandemic, and investing in more affordable housing and spending on core needs such as water, sewer and broadband.However, she said she was also seeing creative ideas such as recurring payments to the poor and investments in remote work support emerge as cities look to expand their safety nets and modernize their work forces.“We’re also seeing communities that never recovered from the Great Recession, have an opportunity to think much bigger,” Ms. McFarland said. “They’re asking what they could do that would be transformational.”The slow pace of recovery from the last recession has been a driving force behind the White House’s push. Mr. Biden has been eager to avoid a mistake that hobbled the last recovery’s pace — underestimating the drag that faltering local governments would have on the national economy. Gene Sperling, a former Obama adviser now overseeing Mr. Biden’s pandemic relief efforts, said not providing help to local governments meant annual economic growth “of about 2 percent versus growth of 3 percent.”The effort also serves Mr. Biden’s political objectives by bypassing national Republicans to build trust with voters in rural counties, small towns and midsize cities in the Midwest and elsewhere.“Something like this creates a space for a White House to be talking to governors and mayors of both parties about the basic mechanisms of governing that just cuts through the politics,” Mr. Sperling said. “That’s a good thing.” More

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    Biden’s Economic Agenda Faces Familiar Hurdle With Fight Over Financing

    As Democrats pursue both bipartisan infrastructure negotiations and a catch-all economic package, old divisions persist on how to fund the spending.WASHINGTON — President Biden’s ambitions for a large-scale investment in the nation’s aging public works system along with other parts of his economic agenda hinge on what has always been the most difficult problem for lawmakers: agreeing on how to pay for the spending.That question has sent a group of centrist senators scrounging to find creative ways to cover nearly $600 billion in new spending that they want to include as part of a potential compromise plan to invest in roads, broadband internet, electric utilities and other federal infrastructure projects.The White House and Republicans have ruled out entire categories of potential ways to raise revenues. The impasse has become the subject of increasingly urgent talks between a large group of Senate Democrats, Republicans, White House officials and, at times, the president himself.Among the ideas that senators have discussed in recent days are repurposing unspent coronavirus relief funds, increasing enforcement by the I.R.S. and establishing user fees for drivers, including indexing the gas tax to inflation.Mr. Biden dispatched aides to Capitol Hill on Tuesday for discussions that his press secretary, Jen Psaki, said yielded progress but no agreement. Top White House officials are set to meet on Wednesday evening with Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California. Those discussions will center on infrastructure negotiations as well as a separate effort to move a large chunk of the president’s $4 trillion economic agenda through the Senate without any Republican votes using a procedural mechanism known as reconciliation.Among those expected to attend the meeting are Brian Deese, the director of the National Economic Council; Steve Ricchetti, a top adviser to Mr. Biden; Louisa Terrell, the director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs; Shalanda Young, the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Susan E. Rice, who leads the White House Domestic Policy Council, according to an official familiar with the plans.Democratic leaders in Congress are preparing to move a sweeping, multitrillion-dollar bill through the reconciliation process to avoid the need for Republican votes and approve spending on physical infrastructure, education, emissions reduction, child care, paid leave, antipoverty efforts and more. But centrist Democrats in the Senate — along with Mr. Biden — have said repeatedly that they want to strike a deal with Republicans on what would be a pared-down version of the president’s plan to rebuild roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects.The bipartisan group has not reached public agreement on how to finance the spending. Moderates in both parties insist that any deal be paid for with new revenues. Mr. Biden has offered $4 trillion in potential revenue sources, all concentrated on increasing the tax burden on businesses and high earners. Republicans have countered with hundreds of billions of their own, including increased taxes for drivers and repurposing previously borrowed money from the $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill that Mr. Biden signed into law this year.The senators who spearheaded the original framework spent much of Tuesday huddling with Mr. Deese, Mr. Ricchetti and Ms. Terrell to iron out the details of an outline to provide for $1.2 trillion over eight years, of which $579 billion is new funding, and how to finance it.“These things are always complicated and tough,” said Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, as he left the Capitol on Tuesday. “We’re getting there. We’re moving in the right direction.”Both sides did not appear to have enough common ground to formally announce how they would fund the plan. Shuttling across the Capitol for hourslong meetings scheduled around votes, the five Democrats and five Republicans declined to offer specifics beyond their prevailing optimism and plans to continue discussions.“Pay-fors,” Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, one of the Republicans negotiating the agreement, said when asked what the remaining stumbling blocks were. “Anytime you’re coming up with $579 billion, you’ve got to figure out how to do it.”Mr. Biden has pledged to not raise taxes on the middle class, including at the gasoline pump. Senate Republicans refuse to increase tax rates for businesses and high earners. Both sides have dug in, to the surprise of some business leaders and other lobbyists in Washington.White House officials have shifted in recent weeks to pressing Republicans to support one of Mr. Biden’s proposals that would not amount to an increase in tax rates: a plan to spend tens of billions of dollars on increased enforcement by the I.R.S. The administration says such a plan would collect hundreds of billions of dollars from high earners and corporations that owe, but do not pay, their fair share of taxes. Republicans say they are concerned about the scope of the provision, but they have continued to discuss it in private meetings.“I would say we’ve put a lot of different options on pay-fors on the table,” Ms. Psaki told reporters on Tuesday. “And our view is: There’s a fundamental question right now. Are Republicans, members of Congress, do they believe that rich people should have to pay the taxes they owe, or should we increase the cost of travelers who are just trying to make it to work? That’s the basic question here. So we’ll see if they can make progress on that exact point.”Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat of Arizona, is among the group of centrists that reached a tentative agreement on a framework for an infrastructure plan this month.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesLawmakers expressed optimism that a deal could be reached this week, but they acknowledged the division over raising revenues. “It’s always the hard part of an infrastructure package,” said Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Republican of West Virginia, who unsuccessfully tried to negotiate an even narrower package with Mr. Biden.“There’s a pretty good dividing line sometimes between Republicans and Democrats — certainly is on taxes,” she added. “But the president’s taken any kind of user fee off the table — which is traditionally where you pay for these things — so that just makes it extra hard.”Neil Bradley, the executive vice president and chief policy officer at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said on Tuesday that he expected any final deal to include some money from Mr. Biden’s plans to increase I.R.S. enforcement.He said he expected a final deal to have some pay-for surprises. “I suspect they’re going to have some creative ones that we don’t know about yet,” Mr. Bradley said.The debate over how to finance Mr. Biden’s economic agenda will also extend to any package that lawmakers seek to push through using reconciliation, which could be as much as $6 trillion. Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, has asked Democrats on the panel to outline their priorities for the package as he aims to pass a budget blueprint to start the process by July.“I think the priorities that the president has established, that we have established, are solid,” Mr. Sanders said in an interview as he described his strategy. “But, you know, we’re going to have to make sure that we end up with numbers that 50 members can agree on.”He added that his intention was to pay for new initiatives — like child care subsidies and health care expansion — through “progressive taxation,” including raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations. But he did not extend that to one-off spending like road or bridge repairs or improving water systems, saying, “it is not necessary to pay for, in my view, one-time capital improvements in the infrastructure.”In an early indication of what Mr. Sanders called an effort to “soothe the edges,” he said he was open to relaxing a $10,000 cap on how much taxpayers can deduct in state and local taxes.Several Democrats, particularly lawmakers representing New York and California, have warned that they might not support any changes to the tax code that do not address that provision. A draft budget document circulated by staff on Capitol Hill and obtained by The New York Times appeared to include funds for a partial repeal of the state and local tax deduction, which could mean eliminating the cap for all but the highest earners, or raising the level of the cap. There were few details about how those funds would be distributed, and lawmakers and aides cautioned that the plan was in flux.“I have a problem with extremely wealthy people being able to get the complete deduction,” Mr. Sanders said. “I think that’s an issue we’ll have to work on.”Cecilia Kang More

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    Yellen Won a Global Tax Deal. Now She Must Sell It to Congress.

    The Treasury secretary worked with finance ministers from the G7 to win support for a global minimum tax. But selling the idea to Republican lawmakers will not be easy.Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen secured a landmark international tax agreement over the weekend, one that has eluded the United States for nearly a decade. But with a narrowly divided Congress and resistance from Republicans and business groups mounting, closing the deal at home may be an even bigger challenge.The Biden administration is counting on more than $3 trillion in tax increases on corporations and wealthy Americans to help pay for its ambitious jobs and infrastructure proposals. Republicans have expressed opposition to any rise in taxes and have warned that President Biden’s big spending plans are fueling inflation and will deter business investment. Business groups have complained that higher taxes pose a threat to the economic recovery and will put American companies at a competitive disadvantage.Persuading members of the Group of 7 advanced economies to agree on Saturday to a global minimum tax of at least 15 percent was intended to help the Biden administration win support for its U.S. tax increases. If enacted, the global minimum tax would require that companies pay at least a 15 percent tax on income, regardless of where they are based, making it less advantageous to relocate operations to countries with lower tax rates.In an interview on Sunday, Ms. Yellen acknowledged the legislative challenge ahead and defended the Biden administration’s plans to raise taxes on corporations. She stood behind Mr. Biden’s proposal to raise the corporate tax rate in the United States to 28 percent from 21 percent.“We think it’s a fair way to collect revenues,” Ms. Yellen said on her flight back to the United States from London after attending two days of meetings with G7 finance ministers. “I honestly don’t think there’s going to be a significant impact on corporate investment.”Ms. Yellen played down the relationship between tax rates and business spending, arguing that the $1.5 trillion tax cuts that Republicans passed in 2017 did little to lift American investment. She said that the changes to the international tax code would ultimately be beneficial to U.S. firms and that even those who face higher taxes, such as Amazon, Facebook and Google, would gain from the additional certainty about their tax bills.But the fate of Mr. Biden’s proposals is not certain, and Ms. Yellen now faces the task of convincing lawmakers that large tax and spending increases will not hinder the economic recovery.Mr. Biden has been negotiating with Republican lawmakers and has expressed a willingness to narrow the scope of his tax and spending plans to rebuild the nation’s roads and bridges. The president has offered to drop his proposal to raise the corporate rate to 28 percent to secure bipartisan support, though White House officials expect to try to push that higher rate through in a separate legislative vehicle that can pass without any Republican support.Ms. Yellen acknowledged that compromise on the corporate tax rate might be necessary and said that she hoped for a bipartisan infrastructure agreement. Republicans are resisting any changes to the 2017 tax law, which cut the corporate tax rate to 21 percent.It is unclear if Republicans will support the international tax agreement, particularly a decision to impose a new tax on big, multinational corporations — even if they have no physical presence in the countries where they sell those services. That part of the agreement was offered by the United States to put to rest a fight with European countries over their digital services taxes that would hit large American technology companies.Some lawmakers have already criticized the idea as ceding taxing authority to other governments, and many business groups were still absorbing the agreement over the weekend. Ms. Yellen believes that the concept will not cost the United States much in terms of lost tax revenue. However, the fact that European countries are not dropping their digital services taxes until a deal is fully enacted has already been criticized by top Republicans in the House and Senate given it could take four years for the agreement to be put in place.If the Biden administration cannot shepherd the tax legislation through Congress, the agreement on the global minimum tax — and a separate deal that was reached on Saturday on a system for taxing large companies based on where their goods and services are sold — will be for naught. Negotiators are hoping to broaden the agreement to more countries at the Group of 20 meetings in Italy next month and then finalize a pact in October. Then countries, including the United States, will have to change their laws accordingly.The G7 summit was Ms. Yellen’s first trip abroad as Mr. Biden’s top economic diplomat. In London, Ms. Yellen received praise from her counterparts for restoring American leadership and for the Biden administration’s embrace of multilateralism after four years of President Donald J. Trump’s “America First” policies.The Treasury secretary described the job as more grueling than her previous role as chair of the Federal Reserve, pointing to the scale of the relief programs that she is overseeing and the department’s vast portfolio. An economist who has focused for years on monetary policy, Ms. Yellen is now in charge of sanctions policy, tax policy, overseeing regulators and dealing regularly with Congress.Beyond the tax negotiations, Ms. Yellen is grappling with the sensitive question of inflation and whether the president’s policies are going to stoke higher prices for a sustained period. Businesses in the United States have expressed growing concern about rising prices, along with a shortage of commodities, and a lack of available workers.Ms. Yellen maintained that she believed rising prices were a short-term issue related to the reopening of the economy and snarled supply chains. Still, the chance of a sustained jump in prices remains a concern that she is tracking closely.To determine if inflation is more than a temporary matter, Ms. Yellen is monitoring two key metrics: inflation expectations and wage increases for low-paid workers. Rising pay for the lowest-wage workers could potentially lead to “an inflationary trend” if there is broad excess demand for workers in the labor market, she warned.“We don’t want a situation of prolonged excess demand in the economy that leads to wage and price pressures that build and become endemic,” Ms. Yellen said. “Looking at wage increases, you can have a wage price spiral, so you need to be careful.”She added: “I do not see that happening now.”At the G7 meeting, Ms. Yellen raised eyebrows when she said that inflation could remain higher for the rest of the year, with rates around 3 percent. However, in the interview, she said that the comment was misinterpreted. She said that she expected inflation rates to be elevated for the next few months but then settle down to be consistent with the 2 percent rate that is the Federal Reserve’s long-term target.“I don’t see any evidence that inflation expectations are getting out of control,” Ms. Yellen said.Critics have suggested that the Biden administration’s extension of pandemic unemployment insurance is fueling the labor shortage by encouraging workers to stay at home and collect generous benefits. At least 20 states have moved to cut off benefits early to encourage people to go back to work.Ms. Yellen said the difference in how states were handling jobless benefits could shed new light on the dynamic, but that she still saw no evidence that the supplement was slowing job creation. She pointed to a lack of child care and positions that were permanently lost because of the pandemic as the more probable reason that employers in some sectors were struggling to find staff.“We wanted to support people,” Ms. Yellen said. “This isn’t something that should be in place forever.”Although the economy is improving, Ms. Yellen said that seven million jobs that were lost since the pandemic still had not been restored. Some of them might never come back.“We’re not in a tight labor market at this point,” she said. More

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    Biden Narrows Infrastructure Proposal to Win Republican Support

    The president offered new concessions this week, including dropping his plan to reverse some of the 2017 tax cuts, as he tries to win support from Senate Republicans.WASHINGTON — President Biden offered a series of concessions to try to secure a $1 trillion infrastructure deal with Senate Republicans in an Oval Office meeting this week, narrowing both his spending and tax proposals as negotiations barreled into the final days of what could be an improbable agreement or a blame game that escalates quickly. More

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    A Look at What's Inside Biden’s $6 Trillion Plan

    President Biden’s funding request to Congress lays out his economic ambitions, with proposals for significant new spending in areas like infrastructure, education and the environment.President Biden’s first budget request maps out a vision of an expansive federal government in the years to come, with increased spending in areas like infrastructure, education and climate change.The $6 trillion plan for the 2022 fiscal year, released on Friday, provides a detailed accounting of Mr. Biden’s economic agenda. It includes two marquee proposals that he has put before Congress: the American Jobs Plan, which calls for new spending on the nation’s infrastructure, and the American Families Plan, which addresses issues like child care, universal prekindergarten and paid family and medical leave.As part of those plans, Mr. Biden is seeking to increase taxes on corporations and high earners. The president’s tax proposals are detailed in the budget request as well.The budget expands on a proposal that Mr. Biden released in April covering discretionary spending, which sketched out his desire to inject funds across domestic agencies, a sharp reversal from President Donald J. Trump’s spending policies.Here are some of the notable proposals in Mr. Biden’s budget request.— Thomas KaplanAn offshore wind turbine facility near Block Island, R.I.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesClimate change is back in the budget.The budget proposal adds $14 billion in new money across government agencies to policies and programs devoted to climate change — a stark contrast to the Trump administration, which tried, unsuccessfully, to zero out funding for dozens of clean energy programs.It also includes the first request for international climate change assistance since 2017. The Biden administration will ask Congress for $1.2 billion for the Green Climate Fund, a United Nations entity created as part of the Paris agreement on climate change to help developing countries.President Barack Obama pledged $3 billion to the fund but delivered only a third of the money during his term. Mr. Trump withdrew from the Paris agreement and also stopped payments into the Green Climate Fund. Mr. Biden, on his first day in office, recommitted the United States to the global accord and promised to restore Mr. Obama’s foreign aid commitments.Domestically, the Biden administration said its funding across agencies would help build the nation’s capacity to transition from fossil fuels to wind, solar and other renewable energy. The budget proposal also includes details of the administration’s pledge to devote at least 40 percent of spending on climate change to communities of color, which studies have shown are disproportionately affected by both air pollution and climate change.The administration is proposing $11.2 billion for the Environmental Protection Agency, a 22 percent increase from the previous year. The E.P.A. was consistently targeted for deep cuts under the Trump administration, and its climate change and health programs were typically dealt particularly heavy blows.The new blueprint makes the case for new spending on environment infrastructure — like replacing all of the country’s lead pipes — after a decade of budget caps and cuts that the administration said caused the agency’s budget to decline by 27 percent since 2010.It includes $936 million for a new E.P.A. program to address racial disparities in exposures to environmental contamination. That program will include $100 million for air quality monitoring and notification technology in communities that will provide real-time data in places with the highest levels of exposure to pollution.The budget allocates $580 million to plug old oil and gas wells and clean up abandoned mines — a plan the Biden administration has eyed for both new jobs protecting communities against the environmental dangers that thousands of old abandoned mines across the country pose as well as a way to prevent future global warming pollution.David Coursen, a former E.P.A. attorney who works with the Environmental Protection Network of former agency officials, called the budget request “robust” and said it would “help rebuild the agency after years of chronic disinvestment.”— Lisa FriedmanA hydrogen fuel pump station in Torrance, Calif.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesA plan to fund clean energy technologies.President Biden’s budget proposes more than $800 billion over the next decade in new spending and tax breaks in a bid to accelerate the deployment of clean-energy technologies aimed at fighting climate change, from hydrogen fuels to the next generation of nuclear power plants.Mr. Biden has vowed to slash America’s planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions at least 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 to help stave off the worst effects of global warming, and the White House is betting that it can reach that goal in large part by using the federal government’s resources to help fund millions of new wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicles as well as newer technologies that do not produce carbon dioxide.The overwhelming majority of the new energy spending being proposed in the budget would depend on Congress passing Mr. Biden’s infrastructure proposal, which still faces an uncertain fate. Republicans in the Senate have pushed back against spending on items like electric vehicle charging stations.In his budget, Mr. Biden is proposing $265 billion over the next decade to expand and extend federal tax breaks for companies that build clean energy sources such as offshore wind turbines or battery storage on the grid. He is also calling for $9.7 billion worth of tax credits to help maintain America’s existing fleet of nuclear reactors, which do not produce carbon dioxide emissions but have faced the risk of closure in recent years because of competition from cheap natural gas.The budget also proposes $10 billion in tax credits for trucks that do not produce planet-warming emissions, such as those powered by batteries or hydrogen, as well as $6.6 billion for cleaner jet fuels and $23 billion to incentivize new electric transmission lines that can transport wind and solar power from far-flung regions in the country. And it proposes to spend $23 billion over the next decade on tax credits for companies that install “carbon capture” technology at power plants or factories.Mr. Biden is requesting to increase the Energy Department’s budget by $4.3 billion, or 10.4 percent, with much of the focus on enabling the deployment of clean energy sources. That includes $1.9 billion to help make homes more energy-efficient and speed up permitting of transmission lines.Mr. Biden is also calling for federal agencies to spend $50 billion over the next decade to procure clean-energy technologies for their own use, including electrified Postal Service vehicles, lower-carbon materials such as steel and cement, as well as electricity from advanced nuclear power plants that are still under development.To a smaller extent, Mr. Biden is also proposing to cut the federal government’s spending on fossil fuels, by rescinding $35 billion worth of subsidies over the next decade for oil, gas and coal companies, including the repeal of tax breaks for well depreciation and a tax credit for drilling expenses. The administration is proposing to raise an additional $84 billion by changing how the government treats extraction and foreign income for oil and gas producers.In addition to spending, Mr. Biden’s climate plans will depend heavily on a separate proposal for a clean electricity standard that would require the nation’s electric utilities to steadily increase their use of all these new low-carbon energy sources until they had zeroed out their emissions in 2035. That policy is only mentioned in passing in the budget, and it would require Congress’s approval.— Brad PlumerHomes destroyed by Hurricane Delta in Creole, La., last year.Mario Tama/Getty ImagesFEMA aims to cushion the rising cost of flood insurance.The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which Mr. Biden has leaned on heavily in the first few months of his presidency, would see its budget stay roughly constant, at about $3.3 billion. Much of the agency’s funding comes in the form of emergency injections of money by Congress after a disaster.But FEMA’s budget request is important for another reason: It shows the administration’s struggle to address the rising costs of climate change, and how those costs affect American households.As climate change gets worse, more frequent and severe floods have pushed FEMA to increase the cost of federal flood insurance, which covers about five million policyholders. Those price increases have generated intense pushback from lawmakers warning that their constituents will suffer — including Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, who objected in March to FEMA’s overhaul of rates.The budget request addresses that concern, proposing to help subsidize premiums for homeowners who might not otherwise be able to afford flood insurance. The goal of those subsidies, FEMA says, is to increase the number of people in flood zones who have coverage.The attempt to reform flood insurance is just one indication of the federal government’s concern that climate change, in addition to its growing human toll, will also wreak havoc on the budget.The budget request calls the impact of climate change a “primary risk,” one that “will likely have significant effects on the long-run fiscal outlook.”The White House presented that financial concern as a selling point for Mr. Biden’s efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions. “The budget’s climate policies serve to mitigate long-run impacts of climate change,” the request said.— Christopher FlavelleThe most ambitious health care ideas come with no numbers.The budget for the Health and Human Services Department includes significant increases for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. But it is perhaps more notable for what it does not include.In its budget summary, the White House signaled its commitment to a range of major health reform proposals, including the creation of a public option health insurance plan; an effort to lower prescription drug costs; a plan to lower the age of eligibility for Medicare; and an expansion of Medicare benefits, to add vision, hearing and dental coverage.But the costs of those expansive policy changes were omitted from the official budget calculations, making it difficult to assess their real cost.Those omissions are unusual. The Trump administration’s budgets also included a number of large health policy initiatives, such as repealing provisions of the Affordable Care Act and a different set of prescription drug reforms. That administration’s budgets included at least a rough accounting of the costs and savings associated with those ideas.Several of the proposals are the subject of active discussion on Capitol Hill. The leaders of two key congressional committees announced this week that they would begin work on a new public option proposal, which would allow certain Americans to buy a government-run health insurance plan instead of private insurance. The House has worked for years on a bill to lower prescription drug prices and extend Medicare benefits for more services. And progressives have been pushing for expanded Medicare eligibility in recent months, a proposal that was also part of Mr. Biden’s campaign platform.Unlike the budgets of the Obama and Trump years, the Biden budget does not propose any policy changes in Medicare. Both previous administrations had suggested a series of small changes meant to improve the efficiency of the program without reducing benefits. Instead, the budget summary document notes that “that we can reform Medicare payments to insurers and certain providers to reduce overpayments and strengthen incentives to deliver value-based care,” a possible sign that such initiatives could be considered in the future. The only major change in Medicare is an expansion of the budget for its fraud unit, additional spending that is estimated to result in about $1 billion in savings a year.While each of the unspecified policy ideas is popular with Democratic voters, each has the potential to upset key health care lobbies, by reducing their funding or replacing their market share with direct government services.The budget does include an extension of new Obamacare subsidies passed by Congress as part of the American Rescue Plan. Those subsidies, which lower the cost of health insurance for most Americans who buy their own insurance, are estimated to cost $163 billion over the next decade. It also includes an additional $400 billion over a decade in spending for home and community-based care for elderly and disabled people, a change proposed as part of the American Jobs Plan.— Margot Sanger-KatzBorder Patrol agents questioning migrants from Central America in Yuma, Ariz., this month.Ariana Drehsler for The New York TimesFunding to deal with migrants at Southern border.Mr. Biden requested $3.2 billion for the office that manages migrant children and teenagers who have been arriving alone at the U.S.-Mexican border in record numbers this year. It is a $1.3 billion increase over what the Trump administration sought in the 2021 budget request.The budget includes funding for asylum and refugee programs to support as many as 125,000 admissions in fiscal year 2022. And to address the backlog in immigration cases, the budget includes $891 million for immigration judges and their staff. As part of that effort, the administration requested $345 million for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to process asylum cases that have been backlogged for years.The administration has been struggling to place migrant children housed in Health and Human Services centers with family members in the United States, which as of Wednesday, is taking an average of 39 days.The budget request includes $15 million to test a new program that would provide migrants with legal representation, which can help them move faster through the bureaucracy.— Eileen SullivanA Lockheed Martin F-35 aircraft at an air show in Berlin.Axel Schmidt/ReutersThe Pentagon pivots to a possible war with China.After nearly 20 years of funding overseas combat through supplemental accounts, the Pentagon will now be paying for its wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and other countries through its overall budget of $715 billion in 2022.While the Army will see a small increase of funding for training Afghan security forces, its overall spending on combat operations will drop more than 21 percent to $18.4 billion..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media 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(min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}The armed services’ budget requests reflect the Biden administration’s shift away from fighting against insurgent groups and a renewed focus on preparing for conventional wars against countries equipped with similar ships and aircraft, with China as their priority.The naval services are placing bets on the need for new anti-ship missiles, including giving the Marine Corps the ability to launch attacks on enemy warships over the horizon from truck-mounted launchers on land. Instead of pursuing the 355-ship fleet envisioned by the previous administration, the new budget’s funding of eight new ships in 2022 will see an overall modest rise to 296 ships, even after the Navy decommissions a number of the earliest Littoral Combat Ships that have been plagued by mechanical problems.The Army, Navy and Air Force are all investing in hypersonic weapons — missiles with conventional explosive warheads that can fly at many times the speed of sound and hit targets at ranges previously only reachable by cruise missiles or nuclear ballistic missiles. In the wake of the United States leaving the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty in August 2019, the Army is continuing the development of artillery rockets capable of ranges previously banned by that agreement.The Pentagon will be buying 48 more F-35 Joint Strike Fighters for the Air Force, and 37 for the Navy and Marine Corps.Military personnel will be receiving a 2.7 percent raise, and troop levels will remain relatively flat with slight reductions in all services save for the Air Force, which will increase its ranks by less than one percent.— John IsmayA reinvestment in diplomacy, democracy and refugees.Mr. Biden has stressed the value of restoring American diplomacy and alliances, and his budget requests an increase of $6.3 billion for the State Department and international programs, more than 11 percent above current levels — and almost 50 percent more than the last budget proposed by Mr. Trump, who repeatedly targeted the State Department for cuts.Prioritizing the threat of the coronavirus, the overall $63.6 billion request includes $1 billion in foreign aid to combat the spread of Covid-19, promote global health security programs and increase research to detect and stop future viral outbreaks.Programs supporting refugees and conflict victims would also grow: The budget asks for $10 billion in humanitarian assistance for vulnerable people overseas. And it would offer $861 million in assistance to Central American nations to help address the root causes of migration from those countries to America’s southern border.In response to growing cybersecurity threats and breaches, the budget asks $500 million for the Technology Modernization Fund, $110 million for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and $750 million “to respond to lessons learned from the SolarWinds incident,” a massive intrusion into federal computer networks attributed to Russia.— Michael CrowleyAddressing violence against women and gender rights.The budget proposes giving the Justice Department the funding it needs to enforce key pieces of Mr. Biden’s domestic policy agenda on a range of issues that the previous administration did not prioritize, including enforcement of environmental laws, efforts to end gender abuse and initiatives to curb gun violence.The Justice Department’s Violence Against Women Act programs could get $1 billion, nearly double the 2021 amount, to fund existing programs and new initiatives that expand protections for transgender survivors of gender-based violence and support people of color who may not have had access to intervention and counseling resources in the past.The proposed budget also allocates $2.1 billion to address gun violence as a public health crisis, a number that is about 12 percent higher than in the previous year. — Katie BennerA teacher’s assistant and students at a Head Start program in Jacksonville, Fla., in 2018.Eve Edelheit for The New York TimesInvestments in high-poverty schools.The budget describes the need to address entrenched disparities in education as both a moral and economic imperative.It includes a $36.5 billion investment in high-poverty schools, a $20 billion increase from the previous year — which it describes as the largest year-over-year increase to the program, known as Title I, since it was created by President Lyndon B. Johnson.It includes $7.4 billion for the Child Care and Development Block Grant, an increase of $1.5 billion from the previous year, designed to expand access to quality, affordable child care.It also seeks to increase aid to early education programs, increasing the maximum Pell Grant by $400, the largest one-time increase since 2009.Mr. Biden is also expanding Head Start programs, which provide early intervention education and support for low-income students. The budget includes an $11.9 billion investment in the program, an increase of $1.2 billion. The coronavirus relief package also included an additional $1 billion for Head Start.— Annie KarniNew York City public housing in Manhattan.Joshua Bright for The New York TimesA renewed emphasis on protecting workers and job training.The budget provides a significant boost in funding for the Labor Department, including more money for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which is responsible for ensuring worker safety, and the Wage and Hour Division, which enforces fair labor laws. Mr. Biden is proposing a 14 percent increase to the Labor Department’s budget.OSHA was widely criticized during the pandemic for failing to do enough to protect workers at meatpacking and other plants where thousands of employees became infected. The agency has lost hundreds of inspectors in recent years, according to the National Employment Law Project, hindering its ability to conduct thorough inspections.— Glenn ThrushThe I.R.S. would get more money to catch tax cheats.For years, the budget of the Internal Revenue Service has been depleted as Republicans sought to starve it of resources in negotiations over appropriations.The Biden administration’s budget changes that, providing $13.2 billion to the tax collection agency so that it can ramp up enforcement activity. A well-staffed I.R.S. is central to the White House’s plan to shrink the “tax gap” and crack down on large companies and wealthy individuals who have avoided paying what they owe.The Treasury Department, which oversees the I.R.S., believes that an $80 billion investment in the I.R.S. over 10 years could yield $700 billion in additional tax revenue.On top of its usual tax collection duties, the I.R.S. has also been at the center of the Treasury Department’s economic relief effort. It has been responsible for distributing stimulus payments and will soon be making monthly payments of the child tax credit.Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen warned this week that her department, to which the budget allocates $15 billion, “cannot continue to be good stewards of this recovery” without sufficient resources.— Alan Rappeport More

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