CNN
—
President Joe Biden heads to Maryland on Wednesday trying to keep the focus on Republicans’ legislative agenda after capitalizing on a viral moment over the future of Social Security and Medicare at last week’s State of the Union.
Biden is set to use his afternoon speech to further lean into his efforts to contrast his plans with Republicans’ agenda, focusing particularly on the GOP-endorsed legislation that the administration argues would constitute “a massive giveaway to the super-rich, big corporations, and Big Pharma.”
At the speech taking place at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local Union 26, the president will assert that his upcoming budget will cut the deficit by trillions of dollars over 10 years, according to prepared remarks.
“If you add up all the proposals that my Republican friends in Congress have offered so far, they would add another $3 trillion to the debt over 10 years,” Biden will claim, according to the prepared remarks.
“When I introduce my budget in a few weeks, you’ll see that people making less than $400,000 a year will not see a single penny increase in taxes, nor have they for the past two years,” he’s expected to say. “You’ll see that my budget will invest in America, lower costs and protect and strengthen Social Security and Medicare, while cutting the deficit by $2 trillion over 10 years.”
In a fact sheet shared with CNN Tuesday, a senior administration official pointed to a series of efforts from of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, which they said could lead to increasing the debt as a share of the economy “by almost 10 percentage points.” Those bills include H.R.23, the Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection Act – which the White House called the “Tax Cheats Protection Act” – that the administration estimates would increase the deficit by $114 billion; legislation to repeal Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which the White House notes would rise Medicare costs for seniors; and a bill to extend Trump-era tax cuts on the wealthy, which the White House says would add $2.7 trillion to the federal deficit over ten years.
The president’s efforts to showcase his plans, which he says will ease the strain on American pocketbooks in a myriad of ways, comes amid what’s been widely seen as a soft launch of the platform of his potential 2024 reelection bid.
While Biden has not officially thrown his hat into the ring again, he’s used several speeches over the last month to highlight his administration’s legislative priorities – particularly issues he often says are discussed at the kitchen table – and how he wants to finish the job by implementing their rollout.
He discussed infrastructure in Maryland, Pennsylvania and New York. He stopped in Wisconsin to highlight job creation under his presidency and in Florida to slam some Republicans’ proposed cuts to Medicare and Social Security. And, much like Wednesday’s upcoming speech, he traveled to a nearby union hall in Virginia last month to hammer GOP economic proposals he has said would plunge the country into economic chaos.
The president also used a significant portion of his State of the Union address earlier this month to share his plans to lower Americans’ out-of-pocket costs, including efforts to lower junk fees, lower the cost of prescription drugs and maintain entitlement programs.
Biden, however, has continued to signal willingness to work with Republicans on negotiating cuts to spending, so long as they agreed not to use the nation’s debt limit as a bargaining tool.
“(House Speaker Kevin McCarthy) said he’s not going to raise taxes at all on anybody, he just wants to cut programs,” Biden said Tuesday. “So, I suggested that instead of making threats about the debt ceiling, which would be catastrophic, let’s just lay out our budgets. I’ll lay out mine on March the 9th, exactly what I want to spend, who gets taxed, who doesn’t get taxed, what programs get cut, what programs get added, and he should do the same. We can sit down and go – I mean this sincerely – go over it, see what they want to cut, see what we want to cut.”
The United States has already begun to use extraordinary measures after the country hit the debt ceiling last month.
Behind the scenes, McCarthy is beginning to chart out a new strategy to ensure the House GOP can muster 218 votes to raise the national debt ceiling and tie that to an array of cuts to federal spending, as the standoff with the White House shows no signs of easing.
While the date at which the US would exhaust the extraordinary measures has been uncertain, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said that “it could conceivably come as early as early June.”
