President Biden will request $37 billion in the annual budget to go towards supporting law enforcement and for crime prevention, the White House announced on Thursday.
The request will be part of Fiscal 2023 budget process and Biden is set to announce it in remarks on Thursday in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. The trip will be focused on building on the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which was the bipartisan gun bill he signed into law last month.
Senior administration officials said the timing of the announcement is a way for the president to stress that the work is not done on gun violence.
“He wanted to seize the momentum. Seize the moment in order to drive further,” officials said.
Biden’s $37 billion request, which the White House has deemed as the Safer America Plan, would invest nearly $13 billion over five years to hire and train 100,000 additional police officers, invest $3 billion to clear court backlogs and solve murders and establish a $15 billion grant program aimed at justice system reform.
Officials said that Biden chose to travel to Wilkes-Barre, which is near his hometown of Scranton, Pa., because his remarks will be geared towards community safety.
“You shouldn’t have to be in your hometown and be living in fear of gun violence. So, the president wanted to go and be able to talk about how home should mean safety, and in order to get that done, we really need Congress to do more to reduce gun violence,” officials said.
Biden is also expected to tout that $10 billion in funding from the coronavirus relief bill that has been committed to public safety and violence prevention, which the White House announced in May.
At the time, Biden had called on mayors and local leaders to use funds from the American Rescue Plan, which he signed into law early last year, to bulk up police forces and safety programs ahead of the summer months.
Source: The Hill
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