Biden's Proposed Budget and American Public Opinion

President Joe Biden has released the proposed Budget of the U.S. Government, Fiscal Year 2023. The budget document is 148 pages long. It presents a very lengthy list of proposed government spending initiatives, along with a discussion of the virtues and benefits of each. The total proposed spending for 2023 is $5.8 trillion.

As is usual in a proposed budget, Biden's document has many of the characteristics of a political statement, akin to a campaign platform. It highlights aspirational goals and emphasizes the positive outcomes that will occur if the budget is adopted as proposed. The budget plan, history shows, is largely symbolic and will be dramatically altered before Congress hopefully passes a new budget this fall (the new fiscal year 2023 begins Oct. 1).

An important question from my vantage point is well how the administration's proposals for spending the public's money fit with the public's views and priorities. This is a very complicated question to answer. The budget covers hundreds of areas of government spending involving every aspect of the nation's existence, domestic and international. Gallup has in the past and will continue to summarize public opinion relating to many of these issues. It will be critically important to take public opinion into account as the debate on the budget continues in the months ahead.