President Biden Releases FY 2023 Budget Proposal

On Monday, President Biden released his Fiscal Year 2023 budget proposal. The President’s budget proposal, which functions as a blueprint to signal the White House’s policy priorities, focuses on imposing new taxes on the wealthiest Americans and increasing defense and national security spending.

The White House requested $5.8 trillion in total and described the budget proposal as “reflect[ing] three important values: fiscal responsibility, safety and security at home and abroad, and a commitment to building a better America. The budget will show how the strongest economic growth in nearly 40 years, powered by the American Rescue Plan, has put the deficit on track to drop by more than $1.3 trillion this year – the largest-ever one-year decline.”

The budget request for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was boosted by 15%, to a proposed $127.3 billion in discretionary budget authority and $1.7 trillion in mandatory funding for FY 2023. Included in this funding is $81.7 billion over a five-year period to bolster pandemic preparedness, with $28 billion for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and $12.1 billion for the National Institutes of Health. Also included in the White House’s proposal for HHS was a commitment to health equity, investments in mental health resources, and the creation of the Vaccines for Adults (VFA) program, a program to provide uninsured adults with access to all vaccines recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices at no cost.

Noticeably absent in the President’s budget proposal was specific funding requests for the President’s Build Back Better proposal, nor does it include measures to offset the costs of any future Build Back Better legislation. The proposal also does not include the COVID-19 relief funding the White House has already requested from Congress, which Congress has yet to pass after that funding was removed from the Fiscal Year 2022 omnibus bill.