WASHINGTON, March 11 (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe

Biden sketched his policy vision for a potential second

four-year term on Monday, unveiling a $7.3 trillion

election-year budget aimed at convincing skeptical Americans

that he can run the economy better than Donald Trump.

Biden wants to raise taxes by trillions on corporations and

high earners, his budget wish-list showed, to help cut the

deficit and pay for new programs assisting those who make less

cope with high housing and childcare costs. Congress is unlikely

to adopt the measures as proposed.

Biden's budget for the 2025 fiscal year, which starts this

October, includes raising the corporate income tax rate to 28%

from 21%, forcing those with wealth of $100 million to pay at

least 25% of their income in taxes, and letting the government

negotiate to bring more drug costs down.

Meanwhile, the government would bring back a child tax

credit for low- and middle-income earners, fund childcare

programs, funnel $258 billion to building homes, provide 12

weeks of paid family leave for workers, and spend billions on

law enforcement.

"Do you really think the wealthy and big corporations need

another $2 trillion tax breaks, because that's what he (Trump)

wants to do," Biden said of Trump at an event in the competitive

election state of New Hampshire. "I'm going to keep fighting

like hell to make it fair."

Republican House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson

quickly rejected the proposal, saying it reflected an

"insatiable appetite for reckless spending" and a "disregard for

fiscal responsibility."

The budget was released days after the Democratic

president's fiery State of the Union address, where he assailed

the values of Trump, his expected Republican opponent in

November's election.

Biden's campaign has struggled to shake voters' concerns

about high prices and the U.S. economy's direction. Forty

percent of Americans think Trump would handle the economy best,

compared with 31% who picked Biden and 28% who either didn't

know or refused to answer, according to a January Reuters/Ipsos

poll.

Trump, whose signature legislative accomplishment as

president was a major 2017 tax cut, wants to sharply increase

tariffs on imported foreign goods and cut regulations on energy

producers.

Democrats faulted the Trump tax cuts as widening the deficit

and tilted to the wealthy but did not repeal them when they

controlled Congress in 2021-2023. Key provisions expire next

year, setting up a major showdown over tax policy.

Biden's proposed budget would raise tax receipts by $4.951

trillion over 10 years, including more than $2.7 trillion in tax

hikes on businesses and nearly $2 trillion on wealthy

individuals and estates, the U.S. Treasury said on Monday.

A proposal to bring down deficit spending by $3 trillion

over 10 years would slow but not halt the growth of the $34.5

trillion national debt. Deficits would total $1.8 trillion in

the 2025 fiscal year, 6.1% of GDP, before falling to under 4%

over a decade, the White House forecast.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a

deficit-reduction advocacy group, called the proposal a "welcome

start" but said it "doesn't go nearly far enough."

The White House forecast 1.7% real GDP growth in 2024, and

1.8% in 2025, rising to 2.2% by 2030. Consumer price inflation

for 2024 was forecast at 2.9% and 2.3% in 2025, with 4%

unemployment, a figure that falls to 3.8% later in the decade.

The forecasts were set in November, and officials said the

figures would be more optimistic if they were fixed today.

DEMOCRATIC MANIFESTO

White House budgets are always something of a presidential

wish list, but that is even more so in the current political

climate.

U.S. agencies are operating without a full-year 2024 budget,

after hardline Republicans rejected an agreed-upon spending

level. The U.S. government spends more than it takes in each

year, and the majority goes to so-called mandatory programs and

military programs, which lawmakers are unlikely to cut.

A House Republican plan unveiled last week, which the White

House immediately rejected, was aimed at balancing the federal

budget within a decade by sharply cutting the scope of federal

government and relying on optimistic, out-of-consensus growth

forecasts.

Last year's standoff between Biden and hardline Republicans

resulted in a two-year agreement to cap spending, the ouster of

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the credit rating agency Fitch

stripping the country of its AAA rating.

(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason in Manchester, New

Hampshire, and David Morgan, Mike Stone, Susan Heavey, Jason

Lange and Katharine Jackson; Editing by Heather Timmons and

Jonathan Oatis)