He could have boasted about it alone, but Joe Biden shared Thursday with Kamala Harris, who replaced him in the race for the White House, a major economic victory on the purchasing power front.
• Also read: ‘She was just laughing’: Trump criticises Harris on inflation
• Also read: Kamala Harris leads Donald Trump in key states, polls show
The president and vice president announced, in a joint statement ahead of a joint trip to Washington later today, a “historic” price cut on ten drugs for diabetes, blood clots and heart problems.
The move follows months of negotiations between the federal health insurance system for seniors, known as Medicare, and the drugmakers.
It will save $1.5 billion in the first year, in 2026, for affected policyholders, Americans over 65, and $6 billion for taxpayers, according to the White House.
This is undeniably an important announcement. The price of drugs in the United States, higher than in other developed countries, has historically escaped any regulation or public control. It is not uncommon, even when you are insured, to have to pay part of it out of pocket.
It is also a major victory for which Joe Biden could have taken sole credit, since it stems from one of his flagship laws, called the Inflation Reduction Act, a colossal investment plan focusing on the energy transition and purchasing power.
Program
But the 81-year-old Democrat has associated the 59-year-old candidate with it, less than three months before the election which will pit him against the Republican Donald Trump.
The vice president, who is given even more space in the press release than the president, promises: “We will not stop there.”
The White House has insisted heavily on the fact that Kamala Harris, who has not played the leading role in the major economic reforms dear to Joe Biden, had had a decisive importance in the vote on the Inflation Reduction Act in the Senate.
At the time, Democrats needed only the vice president’s vote to beat Republicans in the upper house of Congress.
Kamala Harris is set to unveil the broad outlines of her economic agenda on Friday, and Thursday’s announcement comes at a timely moment in an area where she is vulnerable: purchasing power.
Inflation is falling in the United States and growth remains robust, but that does not prevent Donald Trump from constantly accusing his opponents of having crushed households with an unbearable cost of living.
“For nearly four years, Kamala has done nothing but laugh while the American economy has sunk into crisis,” the Republican candidate said at a rally on Wednesday.
Pas de deux
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have entered into a delicate pas de deux since the political earthquake caused by the octogenarian president’s withdrawal of his candidacy on July 21.
On the protocol level, Joe Biden still has precedence and he intends to praise his record until the end, according to him unfairly underestimated by the press.
But by withdrawing his candidacy, he has lost any political advantage, especially given the undeniable momentum gained by the vice president, who has given new hope to the Democratic Party with her energetic start to the campaign.
Kamala Harris has managed to catch up with, or even slightly overtake, Donald Trump according to polls conducted in certain key states, something Joe Biden, weighed down by concerns about his age, had never managed to do.
So far, the president has stayed away from the campaign.
The vice-president must chart her own course, without denying the policies implemented by the man she has supported since January 2021, some of which, on the economic level, will not fully produce their effects for several years.
Without ostentatiously sulking at Joe Biden, Kamala Harris will probably not want to rely excessively on this unpopular president, who certainly has a certain amount of sympathy among Democrats, but is incapable of warming up the rooms in the manner of a vibrant orator like Barack Obama.
Both presidents, the current and former, will speak next week at the Democratic convention in Chicago, where the vice president is expected to be triumphantly sworn in.
