The following content is sponsored by Americans for Limited Government.
There’s an old joke in Washington that the vice president has only two responsibilities. The first is to ask the president how well he’s feeling that day, and the second is to break ties in the Senate.
Job number one is now moot, as Democrats have undemocratically ousted President Joe Biden from re-election and installed (Vice) President Kamala Harris. And job number two is one that Harris probably wants to cover up rather than brag about.
Two years ago, Harris’s vote broke the 50-50 tie on the “Inflation Reduction Act” (IRA), a key part of the Biden-Harris administration’s “investing in America agenda.” So, despite her not so transparent attempt recently to run away from Biden, she owns the IRA. The White House recently put out a fact sheet on how its “accomplishments” have saved the world from the “climate crisis.”
Even left-wing outlets acknowledge that the legislation had no impact on inflation, which tripled when Biden took office and is still higher than it ever was under Trump – or Obama, who hasn’t shared the trick to low inflation while he’s puppet-mastering things.
Americans know that everything has become more expensive under Biden and Harris – gas, groceries, housing. But perhaps the worst impact the IRA had was breaking health care for America’s seniors, spurring the biggest spike in Medicare Part D premiums ever. The IRA re-wrote Medicare Part D, changing it from a program that relied on markets and competition to keep costs down, to a command-and-control style program with price controls set by bureaucrats in Washington, DC. And the consequences have been devastating.
For the 50 million Americans enrolled in Medicare Part D, after 15 years of stability, premiums went up more than 20 percent in 2024 and are expected to increase by almost 50 percent in 2025.
And here’s the latest. To temporarily defray the premium hikes on seniors right before the election, the Biden-Harris administration is bailing out Part D insurers with billions in taxpayer dollars to conceal the increases. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is calling it a “premium stabilization” for stand-alone prescription drug plans, the full details of which have been spelled out in an excellent report by Paragon Health Institute.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal denounced this as “a back-door way for Democrats to ration access to costly drugs.” The paper’s editorial board continued, “CMS’s intervention is another example of how the IRA will cost far more than Democrats claimed. Nobody knows how much more since CMS isn’t doing a normal rule-making that requires a cost analysis.”
Thankfully, leading Republican lawmakers have asked the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to do one.
This week, House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-TX) and Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-IA), along with House Energy & Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA); House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO); and Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Mike Crapo (R-ID), penned a letter demanding more details on the CMS bailout – which Democrats call a “demonstration program.”
“Because of Democrats’ rushed, partisan policymaking in the IRA, America’s seniors now face skyrocketing premiums for prescription drug coverage next year,” the Republicans said. “This will constrict their choices when making health coverage decisions for next year.”
“To cover up rising premiums ahead of November, the Biden-Harris Administration announced a new demonstration program, which will buy down premium increases by sending billions of taxpayer dollars directly to large insurance companies,” they said.
These all seem like important issues to sort out in a complicated program that provides for the health and wellness for 50 million Americans. But rather than provide accountability on Medicare price controls, Harris is threatening more price controls on as much of the economy as she can get her hands on … as if we needed one more reason to want Donald Trump back in the White House.