President Biden on Friday asked Congress to authorize a $1.52 trillion federal spending plan for 2022, which gives a sense of his administration’s priorities, calling for a 16 percent increase in funding for non-defense domestic programs and a relatively flat 1.7 percent increase for defense. Biden’s first discretionary spending request, detailed in a blueprint (pdf) from the White House’s acting budget chief, Shalanda Young, calls on Congress to provide $769 billion for non-defense programs and $753 billion in national defense funding for the upcoming fiscal year. The request is a precursor to a bigger, annual budget proposal that will come later in spring and will cover mandatory spending on programs like Social Security and Medicare. Discretionary spending requests, which are subject to the appropriations process and require Congress to set a new funding level each year, can be a battleground for partisan wrangling that have in the past led to …