Washington, D.C. — On March 9, the White House released the President’s budget request, a reflection of the Biden administration’s priorities for the country.

Karen Dolan, director of the Criminalization of Poverty Program at the Institute for Policy Studies, released the following statement in response to Biden’s budget:

“Biden’s commonsense budget proposal takes strong moves forward to level the grossly unequal economic playing field in this country. It shores up tattered programs for poor, low-income, and middle-income American families, no matter what we look like or where we live.

As an expression of values, its proposals to invest in families and workers, protect Social Security, and strengthen Medicare reflect the values of most of us.

The domestic spending side of Biden’s federal budget proposal makes necessary investments in our well-being.  It invests in housing and health, child and elder care, clean energy, and education and brings back the very popular expanded Child Tax Credit that cut child poverty just about in half.

Where Biden’s budget falls woefully short is its call for an increase, rather than a reduction, in an already obscenely bloated defense budget. During a time when the U.S. isn’t embroiled in any war, not only should the military budget not increase, we should be seeing a peace dividend and investing those funds into programs that help rather than hurt our families and workers.”