The White House released the outline of President Biden’s “discretionary funding request” Friday afternoon, the classic time when Washington operatives and corporate flacks put out bad news. What we cared about mostly was how much the President was recommending be given to Alcohol & Tobacco Tax & Trade Bureau. As the old saying goes, the Devil is in the details, but what the White House put of Friday is striking devoid of details.
TTB’s parent agency, the Treasury Department is proposed to receive a 10.4% funding increase, focused on the Internal Revenue Service so the Internal Revenue Service can “increase oversight of high-income and corporate tax returns to ensure compliance.” There’s also a $417 million increase in funding for tax enforcement “as part of a multiyear tax initiative that would increase tax compliance and increase revenues.”
Maybe Mary Ryan, TTB’s Administrator, has been given a clue as to how much the President’s budget will recommend be appropriated for the agency. We hope so, but there is absolutely nothing in the outline presented on Friday to give the public a hint.
The White House, with some justification, blames the Trump Administration for this, noting it did little to facilitate the transition between administrations.
Still, the document does provide some insight into the Biden Administration’s priorities: No. 1 winner is the Education Department (remember Dr. Jill Biden, the president’s wife is a card-carrying National Education Association member and reportedly still teaching writing at Northern Virginia Community College. But she’s not listed in NOVA’s faculty directory.) Education gets a 40.8% increase.
No. 2 is Commerce, with a 27.7% increase. A substantial part of this increase would go to fully funding two new Manufacturing Innovation Institutes, “one of which is aimed at restoring the U.S. as a global leader in the design and manufacture of semiconductors.” Importantly for the bev/al industry, there’s also a commitment to insure the International Trade Administration has adequate funds and staff to address foreign trade practices and barriers.
No. 3 is Health & Human Services, with a 23.1% increase that includes a 22.5% increase for the anti-alcohol Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. This is something the industry might worry about because the outline says CDC would “use this additional funding to support core public health capacity improvements in States and Territories.” It also proposes enhancing CDC’s “ability to deploy experts internationally and build international capacity to detect and response to emerging global biological threats.”
No. 4 is the Environmental Protection Agency which gets 21.3% more to restore staff levels cut during the past four years, which would “enable EPA to tackle climate change, bolster State climate programs, advance climate research and invest in resilient infrastructure across the U.S.
No. 5 is the National Science Foundation, which is slated to receive 19.8% more to advance climate science and sustainability research, fund scientific research, fund science efforts at Historically Black Colleges and Universities “and other minority-serving institutions.”