WASHINGTON—Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts today released the following response to President Biden’s fiscal year 2023 budget request. His budget is bloated with excessive spending, job-killing taxes, and harmful regulations that threaten America's economy, while also failing to provide the U.S. military with the funding and resources it needs to successfully defeat our key adversaries, including Russia and especially the Chinese Communist Party (CCP):

“Excessive government spending and costly energy regulations are the two most significant reasons Americans are suffering from record-high inflation. This tone-deaf budget does absolutely nothing to address the disastrous policies that caused prices to spike for oil and gas, housing, food and other things that Americans rely on every day.

“It is also loaded with budget gimmicks, unrealistic assumptions, and devastating tax hikes—to say nothing of the ‘hidden tax’ of inflation that is hitting working Americans the most.”

“This budget also falls woefully short in adequately funding our military and would harm military readiness and weaken America on the world stage. While adversaries like the CCP are investing heavily in new technology and resources to challenge U.S. interests, this budget shows the Biden administration does not understand the strategic threats we face, nor which assets the military needs to overcome them. Instead, it provides loads of funding for programs to find ‘extremists’ in the military and ‘green energy’ experiments at the Pentagon. And of course, the cost of critical military equipment is being driven up by historic inflation, for which the Biden budget provides no plan to adjust accordingly.

“Biden’s budget is an affront to our fundamental values. Despite the majority of Americans' opposition to taxpayer-funded abortion, this budget omits the bipartisan Hyde Amendment in proposed Health and Human Services spending. The Hyde Amendment is estimated to have saved more than 2 million lives since its enactment. It also gives the federal education bureaucracy even more power at a time when millions of parents are pushing back on ‘woke’ ideologies being forced upon their children in public schools and total lack of curriculum transparency.

“We can only get our nation back on track by rolling back excessive government spending, adequately funding our armed forces, cutting back on crippling federal regulations, and protecting the rights and values of Americans. Congress needs to make clear this budget has no chance of survival on Capitol Hill, and instead look to commonsense policy proposals, like the Heritage Budget Blueprint, to restore fiscal sanity to this country.”

Learn more about Heritage’s Budget Blueprint that promotes opportunity for all.