President Obama released his sixth budget proposal, requesting $3.9 trillion in fiscal year 2015. His proposal would relieve sequestration cuts by adding back $56 billion in discretionary spending next year in an “Opportunity, Growth, and Security Initiative.”
The new spending would be evenly split between military and domestic discretionary programs, and the additional funding will come from cuts to federal crop insurance, changes to TSA passenger fees, by closing some individual and corporate tax loopholes.
President Obama’s budget arrived over a month after the legal deadline of the first Monday in February. Meanwhile China is roaring with military futures and it is getting harder to swallow.
As most of the world’s biggest militaries scale back their budgets, China is planning on increasing theirs. The world’s second-biggest economy may already have the largest military in terms of manpower, but technologically it lags the U.S.
According to defense consulting and analysis company IHS Jane’s, this year China will be spending $148 billion on defense funding, up from $139.2 billion last year, spending more money on its military than any other country in the world except for one: the United States.
Though the U.S. holds on tightly to the No. 1 position, budget cuts of $90 billion this year will bring the American defense budget down to $574.9 billion, so China is slowly closing in.
IHS also reported that by next year China is expected to spend more money on the military than Britain, Germany and France combined. By 2024, it will spend more than the entirety of Western Europe.
Now back at home – after the great recession there was no budget passed for several years – from 2010 til now, not many concurrent budgets were passed.
Currently I am skeptical on what exactly all the big spending will result in our America being somewhat better or somewhat worse. Here is what Obama wants to do in 2015:
Spending and Cuts
In addition to the spending levels set out in the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013, President Obama proposes a total of $56 billion in new spending in fiscal 2015 for a total of $1.19 trillion in discretionary spending, an increase of about 1 percent relative to 2014 enacted levels.
The budget includes $28 billion in additional military spending and $28 billion in new spending for energy efficiency programs in the states, job training, expanded Head Start, and universal pre-kindergarten.
The president also proposes $302 billion in additional infrastructure spending over the next four years, which would improve roads and bridges as well as fund transit projects. Yet he proposes to pay for this new spending with a one-time opportunity for corporations to bring money stashed overseas back into the U.S., and is tantamount to a corporate tax break.
Nearly eight in 10 American voters (79 percent) want to close tax loopholes that ensure corporations pay as much on foreign profits as they do on domestic profits. [i]
