Today, President Joe Biden held an event in the Rose Garden at the White House to celebrate the lower drug costs possible thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, which passed without any Republican votes in either the House or the Senate. Phasing in over the next few years, the measure will cap the out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs at $2000 a year and make vaccinations free for seniors on Medicare. If the price of drugs rises faster than inflation, drug companies will have to rebate the difference to Medicare. And Biden noted that today, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that the premium for Medicare Part B, which pays for doctor visits, will decrease this year.
All of this was possible, he said, because the biggest corporations in America will have to pay a minimum corporate tax of 15%. “The days of billion-dollar companies paying zero taxes are over.” “And,” he added, “we’re doing all this by bringing down the deficit at the same time. You hear about us being ‘big spenders’? Well, they raised the debt by $2 trillion. We’ve reduced the deficit in my first year, 2021, by $350 billion.”
Biden called out the Republican budget plan, written by Florida senator Rick Scott, to sunset all federal legislation in five years, promising that Congress will reauthorize it if it is worthwhile. This means that every five years, Congress will have to vote to reauthorize Social Security and Medicare or they will end. Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson has gone further, calling for moving Social Security and Medicare spending from mandatory spending, which is protected, to discretionary spending, which must be reapproved every year, thus making it vulnerable to cuts or even elimination.
“I have a different idea,” Biden said. “I’ll protect those programs. I’ll make them stronger. And I’ll lower your cost to be able to keep them.”
Biden likely made this stand, at least in part, because Republican attack ads have been telling seniors that the Democrats have made cuts to Medicare. It is technically true that costs will drop: the government should save $237 billion between 2022 and 2031 from the Inflation Reduction Act’s drug policies. But these savings come from the fact that the IRA lets the federal government negotiate with pharmaceutical companies over prices, not because it will cut the benefits seniors receive.
Disinformation seems to be the hallmark of the midterm campaign.
In June, Republicans championed the overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision protecting the right to abortion, at first insisting that the Dobbs v. Jackson Womens’ Health decision would simply send the question of abortion rights back to the states. Now, with Republican lawmakers calling for a national law outlawing abortion everywhere, those running for election are scrubbing their websites of their abortion stances and downplaying the issue.