Will Biden’s Tax Bill Solve the Debt Crisis and Fund Medicare?

President Biden on Tuesday rolled out a plan he says will shore up Medicare for decades, and we’re all supposed to believe the spin: looming insolvency averted. But this proposal is really a huge tax increase paired with prescription-drug rationing that does nothing to reform the health entitlement, and the tax ratchet is only beginning.

President Biden is set to formally propose an array of tax increases on wealthy individuals and corporations in a budget plan that he says will reduce the deficit by $2 trillion over the next decade, setting up a battle royal with Republicans on Capitol Hill.  

Biden told lawmakers during his State of the Union address last month that his budget will lower the deficit and extend the solvency of the Medicare Trust Fund “by making the wealthy and big corporations begin to pay their fair share.”  

Millions of Americans work their whole lives, paying into Medicare with every working day — starting with their first jobs, even as teenagers. Medicare is more than a government program. It’s the rock-solid guarantee that Americans have counted on to be there for them when they retire.

For decades, I’ve listened to my Republican friends claim that the only way to be serious about preserving Medicare is to cut benefits, including by making it a voucher program worth less and less every year. Some have threatened our economy unless I agree to benefit cuts.