President Biden unveiled nearly across-the-board spending surges in his fiscal 2024 budget request on Thursday, signaling that the White House is looking to aggressively fund its key priorities and shoving aside criticisms from the congressional Republicans who are promising to fight to reduce federal spending next year…

Customer Service: President Biden’s budget placed a renewed focus on improving delivery of government services. Nine agencies—the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Homeland Security, Interior, Labor, Treasury and Veterans Affairs, as well as the Small Business Administration and the Social Security Administration—are looking to stand up or significantly expand customer experience offices. That will include the hiring of 120 new, full-time employees focusing on customer service. Various agencies will test new customer service initiatives, such as the Transportation Security Administration deploying customer experience professionals at airports…

New Veterans Fund: After signing the PACT Act into law last year, which opens up Veterans Affairs Department care and benefits to as many as 5 million veterans, the Biden administration is looking to quadruple funding for the toxic exposure fund to $20 billion. Overall VA medical spending is increasing by just 2% and the entire VA budget request would be bumped by 5% to $325.1 billion. That would mark a much smaller rate than VA has requested in recent years when the figure was typically in double figures, but department officials said on Thursday it has carryover funds available. They added the budget would fund higher pay rates and other incentives as VA looks to grow its workforce to support its widening patient pool… Read the full article here.