Making America Great Again: Making America Richer by Working and Mitigating the Influence of the Pandemic, the Ukraine War, and the Ukraine Crisis
Over the past nearly two years, we have made enormous progress. My administration, working with Democrats in Congress, is building an economy that grows from the bottom up and middle out.
The unemployment rate was 3.51%, the lowest in 50 years. Almost 700 thousand manufacturing jobs have been created. On my watch, “Made in America” isn’t just a slogan, it’s a reality.
There is more to be done. Inflation is driven by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine is a global challenge. I am aware that many people have a job, and are still having trouble paying gas, rent and groceries. I want to lower costs for families.
We need to make it easier, not tougher, for hard-working Americans to get by. I took action to make life easier for the students of families recovering from the Pandemic. Republicans criticized the move, but I will never apologize for helping working- and middle-class Americans as they recover from the pandemic. The GOP officials who voted for a tax break for billionaires are not the same ones.
Gas prices have been decreasing 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. It is 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 have laid out their plan very clearly. It would increase your costs and make inflation worse.
My administration gave Medicare the power to negotiate drug prices. We capped out-of-pocket prescription drug costs at $2,000 a year for seniors and capped seniors’ monthly insulin payments at $35 a month. Big pharma and many other lobbyists spent lots of money trying to stop health care savings for Americans. They did not succeed.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/25/opinions/american-people-face-a-choice-joe-biden/index.html
Are Corporate Taxes Really Important? Reply to Biden on the Challenge of Senior Voting in the Light of Measures of the Affordable Affordable Care Act
The Democrats want the biggest corporations to pay 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 who makes less than $400,000 a year to pay more in federal taxes.
Whether Biden proves to be more effective in persuading older voters than other Democrats at getting them to vote for him will depend on whether seniors really believe the GOP will cut the programs if given the power to do so. He predicted that it would affect the senior community’s votes if they thought that it was being threatened. But, he added, “as long as they are not threatened, the other values of seniors on top issues more and more correspond with Republicans.”
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.
The 2012 State of the Union Address of Joe DeSantis: A Conversation with Scott and Eliminating Market Forces to Restructure Social Security
America is having a test of democracy. We are learning what every generation has to learn: nothing about democracy is guaranteed. You have to defend it. It should be protected. Choose it.
I’m absolutely confident that, just as they did in 2020, the American people will again vote in record numbers and make it clear that democracy is a value that both defines us and unites us as Americans.
Over the last few years, we have faced some very challenging challenges, but we did not give up. And, I have never been more confident about our future. The American people will make a decision in 14 days.
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 an interview with a local newspaper, DeSantis said he supported the need for market forces to restructure Social Security.
I am in favor of what Ryan is trying to do. It’s not a voucher, it’s premium support,” he was quoted as saying. It’s possible to supplement your own income with a plan.
“I would embrace proposals like [Rep.] Paul Ryan offered, and other people have offered, that are going to provide some market forces in there, more consumer choice, and make it so that it’s not just basically a system that’s just going to be bankrupt when you have new people coming into it,” DeSantis told the St. Augustine Record in a video that was posted on YouTube at the time.
At the time, DeSantis was a Tea Party fiscal conservative who had the support of conservative groups like the Eagle Forum and the Club for Growth.
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.
In the State of the Union address on Tuesday and in speeches on Wednesday and Thursday, the president referred to a part of Scott’s plan that says, “All federal legislation sunsets in 5 years. If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again.” Biden said that Social Security and Medicare will be included in all federal legislation.
“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 like me that have been more successful will not have to pay more. I will have premium support that’s going to guarantee me a certain amount of coverage.”
“If you want something over and above that, if you want a Cadillac plan or something, then I do think it should be driven by the consumer rather than imposed on the taxpayers,” he added. That makes sense to me.
“What I think we need to do for people in my generation particularly, is start to restructure the program, in a way that’s gonna be financially sustainable, both Social Security and Medicare,” he added.
On January 4, 2013), one of his first interviews as a newly sworn-in member, was with CNN, where he said he hoped Congress would take on restructuring entitlements when asked about Social Security and Medicare.
The Republican senators accused Biden of lying to the public. This fact-check shows the exchanges.
The White House sent an email to reporters on Thursday stating that Johnson had said in interviews this week that social security might be in a Ponzi scheme and that Biden had lied about his position on Social Security.
Scott accused Biden of being dishonest and confused. Scott claimed on Wednesday that his plan was designed to deal with all of the crazy new laws Congress has been passing.
The sunset proposal was mentioned during the portion of the State of the Union where Biden discussed the fight 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.
It is possible that the word “cut” can be political. One stakeholder’s cut is another stakeholder’s benefit. If the Medicare program’s payments are based on the total costs of the program, a reduction in the amount of payments to doctors and hospitals may reduce premiums for beneficiaries. Lowering premiums is a benefit to all taxpayers who help fund Medicare. It costs more for taxpayers to increase available benefits, which helps doctors, hospitals and other health providers. And then on and on.
What Biden Means by Addressing the Tax Deficit Debt Problem in the House of Representatives to the House Select Committee on Budget and Budget Issues
Biden has accurately cited Johnson’s remarks this week. Here’s what Johnson told a Green Bay radio show in August: “We’ve got to turn everything into discretionary spending, so it’s all evaluated, so that we can fix problems or fix programs that are broken, that are going to be going bankrupt. We just keep piling up debt as long as things are on autopilot. When he faced criticism, he stood by his comments and said that was his longstanding position.
I have never said I wanted to end Social Security, and the Democrats have accused me of that since I ran for office. 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.
The nation’s debt ceiling needs to be raised by June or the county will default on its debt. The rise of the Tea Party has led to Republicans pushing for cuts to spending. Kevin McCarthy has not been able to contain some of the more vocal, right-wing members in his conference.
“In 1975, he has a bill, a sunset bill,” Scott said on CNN of Biden when he was a freshman senator. It requires every program to be checked every four years, not just cost but worthiness.
What the Future of Social Security and Medicare is going to tell us in the next eleven years, or How Rep. Mike Rounds of South Dakota can tell us
Republicans raised their hand. So guess what? We accomplished something. Unless they break their word. There are going to be no cuts in Medicare, 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 need a better plan in place in the next 11 years. We can see some reductions of as much as 26% in some sort of benefit 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 told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins last week that his proposal is intended to eliminate wasteful spending and help ensure the government can “figure out how to start living within our means.”
“We think that there are possibilities out there of long-term success without scaring people and without tearing apart the system and without reducing benefits. Management is needed for it to work. And it requires actually looking at and making things better,” he said.
Social Security, Medicare and the Rick Scott Plan: Where Are We Going? Why Do Democrat Candidates Choose the Right Way to Reform Social Security and Medicare?
The Democrats said Republicans wanted to undermine the federal health program that covers 64 million seniors and people with disabilities. In the past, Republicans have pinned the threat to Medicare on Democrats.
“That’s not the Republican plan; that’s the Rick Scott plan,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on a Kentucky radio show Feb. 9, echoing his opposition to the plan last year.
At the beginning of his second term, in 2005, President George W. Bush made it his top priority to “partially privatize” Social Security. That proved singularly unpopular. It was the first time since 1994 that Democrats won back the House.
There are a lot of steps Congress could take to delay insolvency for Medicare and Social Security. The steps previous Congresses have taken when the programs have been near insolvency are what makes them more controversial than others.
The government’s risk of health inflation could be shifted to seniors. And while it clearly would benefit the taxpayer, it would disadvantage both providers and the people on Medicare.
During the debate in October of 2012, moderated by MarthaRaddatz for ABC, Biden and Ryan discussed their views on Social Security and Medicare. Ryan insisted that changes were needed to preserve the programs’ long-term viability and that current seniors and those near retirement would not see their benefits reduced.
That outcome underscores the obstacles facing Biden now as he tries to recapture older voters by portraying Republicans as threats to the two towers of America’s safety net for the elderly. In the past four presidential elections, the GOP nominees have carried all seniors in every contest, thanks to their strong support among White senior citizens, according to exit polls. Democrats have likewise consistently struggled among those nearing retirement, older working adults aged 45-64.
The debate over Social Security and Medicare is important for the election because it can help determine who Biden is for versus who Republicans are for, said Matt Hogan, who helped conduct the poll.
Politically, “Democrats have used Social Security and Medicare really a lot over the past two or three decades, maybe four decades,” said Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at Third Way, a centrist Democratic group. “The payoff has been a lot less than Democrats have generally thought it would be.”
“The question I always ask myself in campaigns is ‘are you talking about something the other side doesn’t want to talk about?’” Stevens said. “That’s probably a good sign that they are losing on the issue.”
The second half of the GOP equation: older Whites receptive to the message of crime, immigration and the broader racial and cultural change
There’s no doubt about the second half of that equation. Polling has consistently found that older Whites, in particular, are more receptive than their younger counterparts to hardline Trump-era GOP messages around crime, immigration and the broader currents of racial and cultural change: for instance, about half of Whites older than 50 agree that discrimination against Whites is now as big a problem as bias against minorities, a far higher percentage than among younger Whites, according to a new national survey by the Public Religion Research Institute. Older Whites are also more likely than younger generations to lack a college degree or to identify as Christians, attributes that generally predict sympathy for GOP cultural and racial arguments.