(Washington) “Let’s ask the richest to pay just a little more”: Joe Biden, campaigning without really being campaigning for 2024, began Tuesday to unveil a draft budget supposed to appeal to the white, popular and elderly electorate who missed in 2020.
The American president, via a press release from the White House and in the columns of the New York Timeslifted a first corner of the veil on the federal budget that he intends to announce, with great fanfare, on Thursday.
Which budget is above all a campaign platform: Joe Biden is no longer master of Congress, and the Republican opposition, the majority in the House of Representatives, will fight mercilessly against his projects.
The 80-year-old Democrat, who is well aware of this, has also started his budget week with a very political promise: to extend the health insurance plan for seniors for “at least 25 years”, by financing the measured by increases in levies on wealthy households.
The Medicare plan was at risk of going bankrupt in 2028, according to a statement from the White House. The extension of this health insurance, which benefits people over 65 and certain people with disabilities or suffering from specific pathologies, will be financed by an increase in levies.
The Medicare funding levy will drop from 3.8% to 5% for incomes — real and latent — exceeding $400,000 a year, according to the 80-year-old Democrat’s plan.
More than 60 million people in the United States have Medicare.
It is one of the few public insurance and welfare systems in the United States, a country where financing health expenses and preparing for old age is largely a private matter.
In addition to Medicare, the State manages “Social Security”, a minimum old age not to be confused with the French “Social Security”, and “Medicaid”, a universal health coverage system intended for the most modest.
Ask (the richest) to pay their fair share so that the millions of workers who helped them get rich can retire with dignity.
Joe Biden in the New York Times
Billionaires and firefighters
He thrashes the Republican opposition, accusing it of wanting to reduce Medicare: “Republicans don’t want billionaires to pay a penny more in taxes, but they won’t protect the well-deserved health coverage of a retired firefighter. »
So Joe Biden continues to hammer home the very social message detailed in his Feb. 7 State of the Union address, interpreted as an informal campaign kick-off – officially, so far, the 80-year-old Democrat has only “the intention” to represent themselves.
Joe Biden, elected in 2020 thanks to the support of the African-American electorate and educated America, has a lot to do to regain votes with white and popular voters, especially older ones.
A recent survey washington post/ABC shows that only 31% of uneducated voters are satisfied with its economic policy, compared to 50% of educated voters.
In 2016 as in 2020, about two-thirds of white, non-educated voters voted for Donald Trump – who is already campaigning for 2024.
Aware that for nearly 20 years, older white voters have been voting Republican, Joe Biden therefore hopes to reverse the trend at least a little with this Medicare support project.
He also knows that the Republican opposition is hardly comfortable on the subject.
Historically hostile to the interventionism of the federal state in areas such as health and welfare, fiercely opposed to any tax increase, the right nevertheless knows that its electoral base is rather favorable to the Medicare system.
Donald Trump felt it. The former businessman now presents himself as a defender of old-age insurance and health insurance for seniors, which allows him in passing to crush certain competitors for the Republican nomination, supporters of an economic line more liberal.
