Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 247 at background briefing. I'm Ian Masters,

and today we'll look into a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with Biden's $7.266 trillion-released-month-25 budget released Monday,

of which $1.6 trillion is discretionary spending, and a trillion of that, 69%, goes to the military,

while $499 billion, 31% goes for everything else like education, health, housing and environmental protection.

Joining us is Lynchie Koscarian, the program director of the National Priorities Program, where she oversees National Priorities.org.

Her work on the federal budget includes

analysis of the federal budget process and politics, military spending, and specifically

how federal budget choices for different spending priorities and taxation interact. We will

discuss her article at the National Priorities Project, militarized funding in Biden's budget totals well over $1 trillion,

and it will grow.

Then we'll examine Trump's mafia-like extortion of corporate America,

where he trashes companies like TikTok and Budweiser,

then after they give him campaign donations, he changes his tune and praises

and supports them. Joining us is Will Bunch, an award-winning national opinion columnist for

the Philadelphia Inquirer, who blogs at Attitude.com, that's spelled at t-T-Y-T-O-D.com.

He's the author of The Burn Identity, a search for Bernie Sanders and The New American Dream,

and most recently, after the Ivory Tower Falls, how college broke the American dream

and blew up our politics and how to fix it.

We'll discuss his latest article at the Philadelphia Inquirer,

Pennsylvania's TikTok billionaire, Donald Trump, and the selling of the president, 2024.

Then finally, we'll assess how much Wall Street is hedging its bet on Biden by telling itself Trump is not that bad, even though they know better.

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