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President Joe Biden on Friday delivered a speech about his efforts to address inflation, with his remarks coming as analysts predict defeats for his party in November’s midterm elections if high prices persist.
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closed sharply lower, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average
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losing nearly 1,000 points, as traders focused on the Federal Reserve potentially moving swiftly to raise interest rates to curb inflation.
“Folks, we’re all laser-focused on lowering the costs for you and your families across the board, and a big way to do that is lower the cost of health care, especially in the area of prescription drugs,” Biden said, as he spoke at Washington state’s Green River College, situated in the Seattle area in the suburb of Auburn.
He called for capping the cost of insulin at $35 a month, limiting the amount that seniors on Medicare have to spend for prescription drugs at $2,000 a year, and giving Medicare the power to negotiate prices for prescription drugs.
With Congress getting back to work next week in Washington, D.C., some analysts are saying Democratic lawmakers could be set to salvage parts of the president’s stalled Build Back Better social-spending and climate legislation — including his proposals to cut the cost of prescription drugs.
See: Congress returning to brawl over COVID aid, China competition bill
Biden’s moves related to helping Americans deal with high prices for gasoline
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and other essentials have included releases from U.S. strategic oil
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reserves and allowing summer usage of gas with 15% ethanol. He’s also delivered reprieves for student-loan borrowers from monthly repayments and rolled out a fix for Obamacare’s “family glitch” in a bid to lower costs for millions.
See: Biden touts savings from summer sale of E15 gas, but analyst sees ‘no price relief’ at most pumps
In Friday’s speech, the president referred to the recent Obamacare fix. He said: “With this change, it’s estimated that 200,000 presently uninsured Americans will gain coverage, nearly one million Americans will see their coverage become more affordable.”
Earlier Friday, the White House had billed Biden’s speech as covering “his recent actions to lower costs and give families more breathing room,” adding that he would “call on Congress to pass his plan to lower health care and energy costs.”
Government data last week showed the U.S. rate of inflation climbed to 8.5% in March, though that could represent the peak of the worst U.S. inflation in 40 years.
Americans’ frustrations with high prices are helping to keep Biden’s approval ratings low — and giving a talking point to Republicans ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Republicans are widely expected to regain control of the U.S. House of Representatives in those elections, with betting market PredictIt giving an 85% chance for that outcome. The GOP is getting good odds for taking back the 50-50 Senate, too, as PredictIt puts them at 77%.
The “overwhelming consensus” is that “Democrats are in for a rough November,” said analysts at Height Capital Markets in a note on Friday. But there are ways that the party could “defy expectations,” the analysts wrote, and one of them has to do with inflation.
“There is plenty of time for the narrative to change from inflation and gridlock between now and November,” the Height team said. “If the economic situation shifts before the election, the president’s popularity could recover.”
Biden also spoke Friday in a Seattle park, where he marked Earth Day in part by signing an executive order that aims for better management of forests.
