President Biden’s Historic 2024 Budget
The Biden administration has proposed its federal budget for 2024. The administration has an expansive view of federal responsibilities and calls for new spending on health care, college aid, paid leave, child care, preschool, housing, and numerous other items.
The new spending is discussed in the budget summary, which starts with the president’s message and runs through chapters for each department over 132 pages. I looked at the document’s language to see what it reveals about the administration’s worldview and priorities.
One prominent word in the Biden budget is “historic.” The administration uses it 74 times to pat itself on the back regarding its legislation, executive orders, international agreements, increases in funding, deficit reduction, progress in schools, the economy, and many other things. Even the “seventh replenishment” of a certain “Global Fund” is called historic spending, even though the fund has apparently been replenished six times already.
The budget proposes to increase spending by 8 percent in 2024 and $2 trillion over the coming decade above the baseline. Many of the budget’s 132 pages describe new spending and subsidy proposals, yet the document uses the word “spending” just five times and “subsidy” four times.
Luckily for the administration, there are alternate words that don’t sound as profligate. Here are the budget’s synonyms for spending and subsidies with word counts in brackets: “investment” (233), “investing” (36), “funding” (230), “support” (287), “strengthen” (158), “bolster” (53), “robust” (30), and “resources” (103). But let me be clear, all this bolstering is not a free‐for‐all because Biden will “target” (26) and “prioritize” (18) it.
The main theme of the budget is that the administration is boldly tackling America’s problems. The budget would “advance” (156), “address” (165), “transform (24), and “reform” (48) many things, each with an “initiative” (66), a “strategy” (45), or a “commitment” (52).
“Global” appears 88 times, often in ways that suggest our federal government is a sort of world government, or in ways that suggest our government is a subsidiary of world government. Some examples are: “America’s global leadership,” “global action,” “global stage,” “global challenges,” “global public health,” “global progress,” “global energy security,” “global security,” “global infrastructure and investment,” “global needs,” “global tax framework,” and “global clean energy manufacturing effort.”
“Goal” appears 45 times. The government should set goals for its operations, such as balancing the budget and improving bureaucratic efficiencies. But the budget mainly uses “goal” in a central planning way, that is, ways to remake society with top‐down spending and regulations. This is a good example: “The National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health provides a roadmap of actions Federal agencies will take and makes a call to action to all sectors of society to collectively achieve the President’s goals.” All sectors of society to follow one man’s goals. There’s a name for that.
Here are some other word counts in the budget:
- “worker” (109), “entrepreneur” (7).
- “equity” (57), “equality” (11).
- “communities” (201), “federalism” (0).
- “restraint” (0), “spending cut” (0), “downsizing” (0).
- “freedom” (1), “liberty” (0), “free speech” (0).
In sum, this year’s budget language is similar to last year’s with little focus on freedom but even more “historic” achievements.
Note: I excluded words in page headers and the summary tables at the end from the counts. A few of the word counts include closely related words. For example, “advance” includes “advanced” and “prioritize” includes “prioritized.”