Axios PM

President Biden's message to the wealthiest Americans is clear: "You have to begin to pay your fair share," Shalanda Young, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, told reporters. "We are happy to have that debate."

• The big picture: Biden released a $6.8 trillion budget proposal for fiscal year 2024 today.

Why it matters: His plan, which has little chance of being enacted by Congress, amounts to the clearest distillation of his political priorities as he prepares to mount a re-election campaign by running against congressional Republicans, Axios' Hans Nichols writes.

🧮 By the numbers: Biden is proposing $885 billion in defense spending to help fund the war against Russia in Ukraine and bolster the Pentagon’s procurement budget.

• For domestic programs, a traditional top priority for Democrats, he's asking for even more, proposing some $1 trillion for so-called nondefense discretionary spending.

🔭 Zoom out: Biden has sought to frame his budget as a serious effort to rein in deficits, claiming that he will reduce overall deficit spending by $3 trillion over the next decade.

Here's how he plans to do it:

• He's pursuing a new billionaire tax, forcing them to pay at least 25% of all of their income, including appreciated assets, in taxes.
• He wants to quadruple the tax on corporate stock buybacks and raise the overall corporate rate from 21% to 28%.
• For Americans with unearned income above $400,000, the Medicare tax rate would jump from 3.8% to 5%, which Biden says will extend the program's solvency by 25 years.
• He wants to increase the top tax rate to 39.6% from 37%, reversing a Trump-era tax bill.

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Stunning stat: A recent MIT study found that false news online reaches people about six times faster than the truth and falsehoods are 70% more likely to be retweeted on Twitter than the truth.

• Why it matters: Companies are aware that misinformation abounds, but few are prepared to address it, Axios Communicators author Eleanor Hawkins reports.

Most U.S. businesses admit they are inadequately prepared to communicate during a crisis, per a recent Capterra survey. 28% of businesses don’t have formal response plans, and 23% have no plan at all.

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Jackie Kennedy Onassis’ former Georgetown home is coming on the market for $26.5 million.

• The intrigue: The property will be the most expensive listing in Georgetown — and it could set a record for D.C.’s priciest sale, Axios D.C. co-author Paige Hopkins writes.

The former first lady and fashion icon briefly lived in the 1790s-era Federal-style house, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, after President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963.

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