President Joe Biden has cast himself as the defender of Medicare , and his latest budget focuses, in part, on ensuring its survival — but at the cost of ballooning deficits and an unsustainable overall fiscal situation.

Biden’s budget for fiscal 2024 includes a whopping $6.9 trillion in spending, an increase of $300 billion. The budget also calls for higher spending the rest of the decade, resulting in total deficits of $17 trillion.

Although the proposal includes a bevy of tax hikes, it does not outline a path to a balanced budget, nor does it envision stabilizing the debt. Instead, the federal debt would rise to record highs and keep increasing.

“This is a budget that proposes $5 trillion in new taxes over 10 years and still has a budget deficit over $2 trillion by the end of the decade. That’s pretty remarkable,” said Brian Riedl of the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank.

Riedl told the Washington Examiner the $5 trillion tax increase is likely the biggest tax ever proposed in a presidential budget.

It is worth noting that any tax hikes will meet strong opposition in the House of Representatives, which is controlled by Republicans.

The budget is not legislation but rather a proposal for Congress to build off — and an opening bid in negotiations with Republicans, who have said they want spending reductions in exchange for voting to raise the federal debt ceiling.

A main focus of the budget is to allow Biden to portray himself as keeping Medicare afloat against GOP efforts to cut it. The trustees of the Medicare hospital insurance trust fund argue that it will be exhausted in 2028, at which point beneficiaries would see immediate cuts. Biden’s budget would make the program solvent for 25 years without cutting any of the program’s benefits.

In addition to expanding drug pricing reforms, the Biden proposal would raise payroll taxes for those earning more than $400,000 to fund Medicare benefits. Specifically, it would hike the Medicare tax rate for taxpayers earning an annual income of more than $400,000 from 3.8% to 5%. It would also redirect funds raised by an existing investment tax from the general fund to the Medicare trust fund.

Biden himself has fashioned himself as the force stopping Medicare and Social Security from being depleted. Perhaps the most memorable moment from his State of the Union address was when he and Republicans got into a back-and-forth on the House floor over that characterization.

Biden said some Republicans want to “take the economy hostage” unless he agrees with their economic plans.

“Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset every five years,” Biden said. “That means if Congress doesn’t vote to keep them, those programs will go away. Other Republicans say if we don’t cut Social Security and Medicare, they’ll let America default on its debt for the first time in our history.”

Republicans blasted Biden for claiming they want to hold Medicare and Social Security hostage in order to exact concessions like spending cuts. Still, the Medicare provision in Biden’s budget brings the issue back to the fore, and Team Biden undoubtedly hopes it will offer some political capital for the president.

“President Biden should also be commended for suggesting measures to extend the life of the Medicare Hospital Insurance trust fund,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “Unfortunately, some of that savings comes from diverting funds from the rest of the budget, robbing Peter to pay Paul, rather than from common-sense health savings that both parties agree on.”

The Biden plan would cut $3 trillion off deficits over the next 10 years. Still, annual deficits would be large and rising.

Rather than stabilizing, the federal debt will continue to rise quickly under Biden’s plan.

Biden's budget would see the debt at a record 110% of gross domestic product and rising in 2033 versus roughly 100% today. That means even without a major unanticipated hit to the budget like a war, recession, or natural disaster, the debt would head to levels the Congressional Budget Office has warned would risk a fiscal crisis.

“The fact that the budget provides modest deficit reduction gives the president the headline and the talking points that he wants,” Riedl said. “But ultimately, this budget would put us on a worse path over the long term because he uses up pretty much every tax-the-rich proposal out there and then puts half of it into new spending, which is going to leave the middle class to ultimately close the rest of the budget deficit over the long term.”

Making matters even worse is the country’s rising interest rates. The Federal Reserve has been on an aggressive tear in rising rates for about a year in response to red-hot inflation. The higher rates threaten to drastically raise the cost of servicing that debt.

Years of ultralow interest rates had allowed the federal government to take on huge amounts of debt with fewer ramifications, but now, as the debt matures, the United States will face much higher interest rates.

“Every point interest rates rise adds $2.6 trillion in interest costs over the decade,” said Riedl. “But the president proposes spending $10 trillion on interest over the next decade, and if interest rates rise, that could easily go to $12 trillion to $15 trillion over the decade just in interest — this will exceed the budget for every program except for Social Security and Medicare.”

Republicans are branding the Biden budget as completely out of touch with the reality of the fiscal situation.

“Paychecks are worth less, the cost for everything is up, and Biden’s tax-and-spending spree will only worsen the economic burden on American families. Biden’s reckless budget proves how out of touch his administration is with reality,” said Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee.

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MacGuineas blamed both parties for getting digging the U.S. into such a deep fiscal hole and said leadership and big decisions are needed from the top down in order to right the ship.

“Most of this massive borrowing is the result of policies put in place years ago by Democratic and Republican administrations and Congresses alike, but it will require presidential leadership to enact real changes, and this budget does not go nearly far enough to make reining in our dangerous debt levels a top national priority,” she said.