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Biden’s 2023 budget adds $30 billion police funding, expands ATF

Joe Biden. (Yuri Gripas/Abaca Press/TNS)
March 28, 2022

The White House released President Joe Biden’s 2023 FY budget on Monday, which includes increasing funding for law enforcement and expanding the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in an effort to combat rampant crime and “keep our communities safe.”

In an email to American Military News, the White House said the budget provides $30 billion in “mandatory re­sources to support law enforcement, crime preven­tion, and community violence intervention, including putting more officers for community policing on the beat across the Nation.”

The budget also invests $367 million – a $101 million increase from last year – at the Justice Department to support “police reform, the prosecution of hate crimes, enforcement of voting rights, and efforts to provide equitable access to justice.”

Moreover, the budget includes $100 million for a multi-agency effort to “provide comprehensive workforce development services to people in the Federal prison system.”

“The Budget makes important investments to support law enforcement while addressing longstanding inequities and strengthening civil rights protections,” the White House said.

Additionally, Biden’s budget offers $1.7 billion to expand the ATF by hiring additional personnel, increasing regulation of the firearms industry, enhancing ATF’s National Integrated Ballistic Information Network, and modernizing the National Tracing Center.

President Biden said in a statement Monday that “budgets are statements of values” and asserted that his budget “sends a clear message that we value fiscal responsibility, safety and security at home and around the world, and the investments needed to continue our equitable growth and build a better America.”

“At the same time, my budget will make investments in securing our nation and building a better America. We will secure our communities by putting more police on the street to engage in accountable community policing, hiring the agents needed to help fight gun crime, and investing in crime prevention and community violence intervention,” Biden’s statement read.

The budget also includes a 20 percent minimum tax on the nation’s top income earners and households worth more than $100 million.

“The tax code currently offers special treatment for the types of income that wealthy people enjoy. This special treatment, combined with sophisticated tax planning and giant loopholes, allows many of the very wealthiest people in the world to end up paying a lower tax rate on their full income than many middle-class households,” Biden’s plan stated.

“To finally address this glaring problem, the Budget includes a minimum tax on multi-millionaires and billionaires who so often pay indefensibly low tax rates. This minimum tax would apply only to the wealthiest 0.01 percent of households—those with more than $100 million—and over half the revenue would come from billionaires alone. It would ensure that, in any given year, they pay at least 20 percent of their total income in Federal income taxes.”