The Making of America: How Affordable are Prescription Drug Costs and Medical Insurance Rates in the 21st Century? What Do Families Need to Know About Inflation?
We have made enormous progress over the past two years. My administration, working with Democrats in Congress, is building an economy that grows from the bottom up and middle out.
The lowest unemployment rate in 50 years is 3.5%. Almost half a million manufacturing jobs have been created. On my watch, “Made in America” isn’t just a slogan, it’s a reality.
We have more to do. The war in Ukraine is one of the factors that have caused inflation to rise. I’m aware that a lot of people have a job and are still struggling to pay for groceries, gas and rent. That’s why I’m so determined to lower costs for families.
I am trying to reduce the burden of working- and middle-class people by lowering the costs of everyday things that they need, such as health care premiums, prescription drugs, and energy bills. The Inflation Reduction Act was passed without a vote of the Republicans because we wanted to reduce the premiums for health care for 13 million Americans.
Gas prices are decreasing partly because of the actions we have taken. They’re down $1.20 since their peak this summer and just this week they fell another 10 cents. That’s adding up to real savings for families.
Republicans in Congress are doubling down on mega, MAGA trickle-down economics that benefit the wealthy and big corporations. They’ve laid their plan out very clearly. It would make inflation worse.
Many Republicans in Congress are calling to roll back these provisions that lower prescription drug costs – some of which take effect in January. That means the $2,000 cap on prescription drugs for seniors would be gone. The cap of $35 per month for the drug was going to be removed. Millions of Americans would see the savings on health care premiums disappear. Republicans would raise those costs.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/25/opinions/american-people-face-a-choice-joe-biden/index.html
What I Want to Fix: The Future of Corporate Taxes and the Roe v. Wade Challenge in the House of Delegated Representatives
Democrats want corporations to start paying their fair share of taxes. In 2020, 55 of the wealthiest corporations in America paid zero dollars in federal income tax. No longer. I signed into law a 15% corporate minimum tax. I will not allow anyone earning less than $400,000 annually to pay a penny more in federal taxes.
A plan put forward by Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who headed the committee in charge of electing Republicans to the Senate, called for sunsetting all federal programs every five years.
The fact is, this is not your father’s Republican party: Many Republicans in Congress want to pass a national ban on abortion. I would veto it right away, and if we elect more Senate Democrats and keep the House, I’ll move to codify Roe v. Wade in January.
It is being tested in America. Everyone has to learn that nothing about democracy is guaranteed. You must defend it. Make sure it is protected. There is a choice, choose it.
The American people voted in record numbers in 2020 and I am confident that they will do the same thing again.
We have faced some of the most difficult challenges we have had in the past and we did not relent. I am more confident in our future than I’ve ever been. In 14 days, the American people will decide whether we keep moving forward or go backwards.
The nation needs to raise its debt ceiling by June or the county will be unable to service its debt. Republicans have pushed for spending cuts since the rise of the Tea Party. Speaker Kevin McCarthy doesn’t have the ability to get the more vocal, right wing members in his conference to come down on him.
The Republicans are playing a game of chicken with Biden administration when they know they are the ones going to chicken out, as if they have the intelligence of Foghorn Leghorn. It would be economically destructive and politically suicidal to let the federal government default on its debt. We will most likely go through this terrifying charade until a few Republicans break ranks and vote with the Democrats to raise the debt ceiling.
I am not sure if there will be any changes to the programs or if there will be any cuts at all. They’re popular with Republican voters, too, after all. There are no possibilities of anything happening except on a bipartisan basis. Any suggestions for fixes that don’t involve large tax increases?
Paul Ryan, Ron DeSantis, a Chicago cop, and the IRS: Tax Fairness and the Re-approval of Social Security and Medicare
Gail: Is that correct? Some people think that this is a tax increase, and I want to propose some tax fairness. The taxation of Social Security payroll stops at $160,000. So a person making a million dollars a year doesn’t pay anything on about $840,000.
Gail: I can’t remember. I spent most of my early career hanging out with Ed Morrone, who was the police chief in New Haven. He told my husband Dan, who was a police reporter then, that the most important job of a cop was “to keep people who hate one another apart.”
A CNN KFile review of comments from DeSantis’ 2012 congressional campaign found he repeatedly said he supported plans to replace Medicare with a system in which the government paid for partial costs of private plans or a traditional Medicare plan. In one interview with a local newspaper, DeSantis said he supported “the same thing” for Social Security, citing the need for “market forces” to restructure the program.
During his 2012 campaign, DeSantis embraced then-Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget which became a political football in the 2012 presidential race, when Ryan was chosen as Mitt Romney’s pick for vice president. Ryan proposed to turn Medicare into avoucher system, whereas Republicans argued that it was premium support. The government would cover the premiums for private plans and traditional Medicare plans.
I would be in favor of ideas like the one offered by Paul Ryan, that would give market forces in there, more consumer choice, and make it so that it isn’t just basically a system that will be bankrupt when you have it.
The Club for Growth, FreedomWorks, and the Eagle Forum all supported Ron DeSantis in his Tea Party run.
DeSantis has yet to announce he if he running for president in 2024, nor has he spoken publicly about his position on the entitlement programs as the governor or Florida, preferring to focus on culture war issues.
The president said that all federal legislation sunsets in five years in speeches on Wednesday and Thursday. If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again.” Social Security and Medicare are currently not required for congressional re-approval, which was correct by Biden.
“I think people who are low income will probably be given coverage that is similar to what they have now,” he said in the interview with the St. Augustine Record. I think people who have been more successful will not have to pay more. Premium support will guarantee me a certain amount of coverage.
He said that if you want a Cadillac plan, then it should be driven by the consumer, not the taxpayers. “And I just think that that makes sense.”
He said that Social Security and Medicare need to be restructured in a way that is financially sustainable for people in his generation.
One of the first interviews he did as a newly sworn in member was on CNN where he said he hoped Congress would restructure Social Security and Medicare.
VP Biden and the White House have been speaking out against some Republican senators that might affect the retirement and health care programs.
And while Lee said in a tweeted statement on Wednesday that, during his 12 years as a senator, he has not called for “abolishing” Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid benefits, only for “solutions to improve those programs and move them toward solvency,” he has supported benefit cuts. For example, he has endorsed various proposals over the years to raise the Social Security retirement age.
Biden overstated the support for Scott’s sunset proposal among congressional Republicans last year. Biden has been more precise in his speeches this week, attributing the proposal to Scott himself or accurately saying in the State of the Union that “some” Republicans – “I’m not saying it’s a majority” – support it.
Biden may have created an inaccurate impression, however, by mentioning the sunset proposal during the section of the State of the Union in which he discussed the battle over the debt ceiling. There is no indication that House Republicans are pushing this proposal as part of the current debt ceiling negotiations with the Biden administration, and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has, more generally, said cuts to Social Security and Medicare are “off the table” in these negotiations.
Scott made a false claim that the president cut billions from Medicare in the Inflation Reduction Act this week, by accusing Biden of doing so. It was not the Inflation Reduction Act that made Medicare more generous to seniors; it was the Act that let the government and seniors spend less money on prescription drugs. The claim of a Medicare cut was repeatedly debunked last year, when Scott and a Republican campaign organization he chaired used it during the midterm elections.
Biden cited Johnson’s comments this week. In August, Johnson told a radio show in Green Bay that it was necessary to turn everything into discretionary spending so that it could be used to fix malfunctioning programs that are going to be bankrupt. As long as things are on automatic pilot, we just continue to pile up debt. When Johnson faced criticism for those remarks at the time, he stood by them and said that was his consistent longtime position.
“The Democrats have been accusing me, since the first time I ran for office, of wanting to end Social Security, wanting to cut it, wanting to gut it, wanting to – I’ve never said that. I’ve always been consistent: I want to save it,” he said in a radio interview this week.
It’s impossible to definitively fact-check this particular dispute without Johnson specifying how he wants to “fix” and “save” the program. His office did not respond to a CNN request for comment.
“In 1975, he has a bill, a sunset bill,” Scott said on CNN of Biden when he was a freshman senator. Every program has to be inspected every four years, not just cost, but worthiness.
Social Security, Medicare, and the State of the Union: Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota warns against cuts to Social Security and Medicare
[Republicans] all raised their hand. So guess what? We accomplished something. Unless they break their word. There will be no cuts to Medicare and Social Security.
How Republicans handle themselves in the next year could determine the depth of what kind of foil Biden has in this group during his expected run for president — as the fight for which party is most in touch with the American people plays out.
Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota offered Sunday a stark warning about the future of Social Security and Medicare if Congress fails to take action now.
We must have a better plan in place by the next 11 years. Some reductions of up to 24% in some sort of benefit are going to happen under existing circumstances. So, let’s start talking now because it’s easier to fix it now that it would be five years or six years from now,” Rounds told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”
Scott said his proposal is to eliminate wasteful spending and to make the government figure out how to live within their means.
We think there are possibilities that are long-term success without being frightening or harming the system, and without reducing benefits. It requires management. And it requires actually looking at and making things better,” he said.
These unsustainable figures result from demographics, rising health care costs and program design. The ratio of workers to retirees will decline to just over 2:1 by the decade. People who live until age 90, a fast-growing group, will spend one-third of their adult life collecting Social Security and Medicare benefits. Medicare benefits will be 3 times larger for a typical retiring couple than they are for their lifetime contributions to the system, according to the Urban Institute.
Workers have responded to this by taking longer to make a benefit claim. In 2021, 31 percent of retired worker claims were made by people age 62, down from 60 percent in 1998, according to an analysis of Social Security Administration data by Mr. Johnson. But 84 percent of workers had claimed benefits by age 66.
Just this week, Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts introduced the latest version of their own Social Security proposal. It would extend solvency by 75 years, give beneficiaries an increase of $200 per month through a revision of the benefit formula, and adopt a more generous annual cost-of-living increase. It would be funded by applying current FICA tax rates to incomes above $250,000, and with two new taxes on investment income.
Social Security would boost benefits by 2 percent, but shift the annual cost-of-living increase to a more generous formula. It also includes targeted benefit increases such as a new minimum benefit level for very low income seniors, and improved benefits for widows and widowers. It also would provide caregiver credits that increase benefits for people who take time out of the work force to care for dependent family members.
Over the next three decades, the Social Security system is scheduled to pay benefits $21 trillion greater than its trust fund will collect in payroll taxes and related revenues. The Medicare system is projected to run a $48 trillion shortfall. $47 trillion in interest payments is projected to be made to the national debt because of the deficits. The data from the Congressional Budget Office shows there is a $116 trillion shortfall. Remove roughly one-third of the inflation-adjusted figures.
The president’s implication that full benefits can be paid without raising taxes for 98 percent of families has no basis in mathematical reality. Imagine that Congress let the Trump tax cuts expire, applied Social Security taxes to all wages, doubled the top two tax brackets to 70 and 74 percent, hiked investment taxes, imposed Senator Bernie Sanders’ 8 percent wealth tax on assets over $10 billion and 77 percent estate tax on estates valued at more than $1 billion, and raised the corporate tax rate back to 35 percent. The combined federal, state and payroll marginal tax rates are around 100 percent for wealthy taxpayers, and America has among the highest wealth, estate and corporate tax rates in the developed world.