Biden Wants to Give Nearly Every Agency a Big Budget Boost. How Much Would Your Agency Get?

President Biden would like to give every Cabinet level department a budget increase next year, and not just a small one. 

The president’s $5.8 trillion fiscal 2023 budget request to Congress unveiled on Monday would boost the budget of all but a handful of major departments and agencies, and every Cabinet department except three would receive a double digit percentage increase when compared with funding in the fiscal 2022 continuing resolution that was in effect until Biden signed the omnibus spending package into law on March 15. 

The Commerce Department would see the highest percentage increase of the Cabinet departments at 31.2%, moving from $8.9 billion under the CR to $11.7 billion under Biden’s request. This would be closely followed by the Veterans Affairs Department, which would see a 29.4% boost from $111.1 billion in the CR to $135.2 billion under the request. 

The Defense, Homeland Security and Transportation departments would receive budget increases under Biden’s request, but only in the single digits. 

The comparison of the fiscal 2023 budget request to this year’s enacted levels of spending was complicated by the fact that the federal government was operating under continuing resolutions until two weeks ago. Because the omnibus spending package was enacted so recently, the budget plan compares Biden’s request to CR spending levels rather than the levels now in effect as part of the omnibus. This means some agencies would not actually get as big an increase when compared with the omnibus spending levels and the Homeland Security and Transportation departments would see slight cuts (of 1.4% and 0.4% respectively) compared to the omnibus levels in effect now. Transportation will also receive funding as part of the infrastructure bill, however. 

The chart below shows how much the major agencies would be slated to receive under Biden’s 2023 request: