The post-debate chatter is all about how President Joe Biden looked and sounded. That’s fair. Communication is a big part of the president’s job. Biden on Thursday night was lousy at it, and in ways that raise deeper questions about his leadership capabilities.
But enacting policy is also a big part of the president’s job. And there were two important, if barely noticed, moments Thursday night that revealed a lot about Biden’s ability to handle that responsibility ― and how it compares to former President Donald Trump’s.
One came right near the beginning, following a discussion of the economy and inflation. CNN debate co-host Jake Tapper asked Trump about his signature economic policy proposal, an across-the-board tariff on imported goods.
Tapper wondered whether the tariff would raise the prices of goods; Trump said it wouldn’t. Economists disagree. Strongly.
One recent analysis, from the nonpartisan Peterson Institute for International Economics, found that the higher prices on consumer goods would raise costs for the average middle class family by $1,700 a year ― while also “inflicting massive collateral damage on the US economy.”
The analysis also pointed out (as have many economists) that tariffs tend to hit the poor and middle-class more than the wealthy, because they spend more of their income on retail goods.
It says a lot about Trump that he’d push such a proposal anyway, and it’s consistent with what he did while he was in office ― namely, cutting taxes in ways that disproportionately helped the wealthy.
Biden on the other hand has a record of enacting policies that skew towards helping the people who are struggling most financially. And that was the takeaway from the second key exchange, which happened so quickly it was easy to miss.
It happened when Trump took credit for a new $35 cap on insulin payments for seniors on Medicare.
In reality, the new insulin cap took effect this year, as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, the sweeping health care and climate bill that Democrats passed and Biden signed in 2022.
Trump can honestly claim to have taken some other, lesser steps towards reducing drug prices, including a pilot program to make some insulin available to some seniors at $35.
But — as a recent briefing from the nonpartisan research organization KFF pointed out — that initiative was temporary and voluntary, and didn’t require that insurers (who manage the Medicare drug benefit) apply it to all of their insulin products.
In other words, it wasn’t the more sweeping $35 payment guarantee that seniors got from Biden. And that wasn’t because Trump didn’t have an opportunity to do more.
During his presidency, Congress took up several pieces of prescription drug price legislation, with the House passing an ambitious bill in 2019 and a key Senate committee considering a measure of its own.
But the Senate (unlike the House) was under Republican control at the time and its leadership wouldn’t bring a bill to the floor. Trump couldn’t or wouldn’t push them to reconsider, and so the effort died ― until Biden became president and, working with Congress, got a version of that House bill into law.
That bill was the IRA — part of Biden’s signature legislation accomplishment. And while its enactment had a lot to do with the congressional leaders and outside groups pushing for it, it also had a lot to do with Biden and his White House operation.
