Biden seeks huge funding increases for education, health care and environmental protection
Source: Washington Post
President Biden on Friday asked Congress to authorize a massive $1.5 trillion federal spending plan in 2022, seeking to invest heavily in government agencies to boost education, expand public housing, combat the coronavirus and other health challenges and confront climate change. The request marks Biden’s first-ever proposal for discretionary spending, a precursor to a fuller, annual budget slated later in the spring that will also address programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
The president’s early blueprint calls for a nearly 16 percent increase in funding across non-defense domestic programs, reflecting the White House’s guiding belief that bigger government -- and spending -- can close the country’s persistent economic gaps. Many of the agencies Biden seeks to fund at higher levels are programs that now-former President Donald Trump had unsuccessfully sought to slash while in the White House. In a further break with Trump, Biden’s plan also calls for keeping military spending relatively flat. Combined, the budget would increase all federal discretionary spending by roughly 8 percent in 2022.
Under the proposal, the Department of Education would see a roughly 41 percent increase over its current allocation, reaching $102 billion next fiscal year, with most of the increased funds targeted to the Title I program, which funds high-poverty schools. The proposal would double federal spending on the program and represent the largest increase since the program was created more than 55 years ago. The plan also proposes a roughly 23 percent boost to the Department of Health and Human Services, including more than $8.7 billion for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which the administration says is the highest funding level for the public-health agency in two decades.
It would create a new federal agency under the National Institutes of Health, called the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, focused initially on innovative research into cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease. The budget envisions nearly $69 billion in federal money towards addressing public housing, a 15 percent increase from the amounts enacted in 2021, to help low-income families obtain access to affordable living accommodations. And the Biden administration hopes to sets aside a total of $14 billion in new sums across government to protect the environment, including new efforts to reduce carbon emissions and research clean-energy technology.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021/04/09/biden-2022-budget/
Full headline: Biden seeks huge funding increases for education, health care and environmental protection in first budget request to Congress
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People "crawled over glass" in the middle of the worst pandemic in a century, to make sure that he and Kamala got elected! 
