WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden on Tuesday proposed new taxes on the rich to help fund Medicare, saying the plan would help to extend the insurance program’s solvency by 25 years and provide a degree of middle-class stability to millions of older adults.
In his plan, Biden is overtly declaring that the wealthy ought to shoulder a heavier tax burden. His budget would draw a direct line between those new taxes and the popular health insurance program for people older than 65, essentially asking those who’ve fared best in the economy to subsidize the rest of the population.
Biden wants to increase the Medicare tax rate from 3.8 percent to 5 percent on income exceeding $400,000 per year, including salaries and capital gains. The White House did not provide specific cost-saving estimates with the proposal, but the move would likely increase tax revenues by more than $117 billion over 10 years, according to prior estimates in February by the Tax Policy Center.
“This modest increase in Medicare contributions from those with the highest incomes will help keep the Medicare program strong for decades to come,” Biden wrote in a Tuesday essay in The New York Times. He called Medicare a “rock-solid guarantee that Americans have counted on to be there for them when they retire.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, was quick to dismiss the plan, telling reporters on Tuesday that Biden’s budget agenda “will not see the light of day.”
More than 65 million people rely on Medicare at a cost to taxpayers of roughly $900 billion every year. The number of Medicare enrollees is expected to continue growing as the US population ages. But funding for the program is a problem with federal officials warning that, without cuts or tax increases, the Medicare fund might only be able to pay for 90 percent of benefits by 2028.
Biden’s suggested Medicare changes are part of a fuller budget proposal that he plans to release on Thursday in Philadelphia. Pushing the proposal through Congress will likely be difficult, with Republicans in control of the House and Democrats holding only a slim majority in the Senate.
The proposal is a direct challenge to GOP lawmakers, who argue that economic growth comes from tax cuts like those pushed through by former President Donald Trump in 2017. Those cuts disproportionately favored wealthier households and companies. They contributed to higher budget deficits, when growth failed to boom as Trump had promised and the economy was then derailed in 2020 by the coronavirus pandemic.
The conflicting worldviews on how taxes would impact the economy is part of a broader showdown. Biden and Congress need to reach a deal to raise the government’s borrowing authority at some point this summer, or else the government could default and plunge the US into a debilitating recession.
Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and an advocate for the kinds of tax cuts generally favored by Republicans, said that the US economy would suffer because of the president’s plan.
“The Biden tax hikes will raise the cost of goods and services for everyone, and make American workers and businesses less competitive internationally and vs. China,” Norquist said.
But Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, applauded the plan despite having some reservations about it.
“The president’s plan would generate hundreds of billions of dollars – perhaps even approaching a trillion dollars – to strengthen Medicare,” said MacGuineas, a fiscal watchdog focused on deficit reduction.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to discuss the numbers behind the budget plan. She told reporters at Tuesday’s briefing that she would not “dive into the math,” but that Biden’s proposal on Thursday “will be very detailed and transparent.”
Ahead of an expected budget feud and the 2024 campaign season, Democrats have ramped up talk around Medicare, vowing to fend off any Republican attempts to cut the program, although so far the GOP has vowed to avoid any cuts. Still, Republican lawmakers have reached little consensus on how to fulfill their promise to put the government on a path toward balancing the federal budget in the next 10 years.
Last year, members of the House Republican Study Committee proposed raising the eligibility age for Medicare to 67, which would match Social Security. But that idea hasn’t moved forward in a split Congress.
Republicans have denied that they plan to cut the program. A proposal from Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., that would require Congress to reconsider all federal laws every five years, including Medicare, has gotten little traction.
Raising taxes on Americans who make more than $250,000 to pay for Medicare has broad support among older Americans, but raising the eligibility age for Medicare, is widely unpopular, said Mary Johnson, a policy analyst for the nonpartisan Senior Citizens League who has researched the issue.
Politicians who try that route might “lose supporters and it can backfire. You can wind up losing your office, too,” she said. “A very high percentage of seniors are voting in elections.”
Biden’s plan is also intended to close what the White House describes as loopholes that allow people to avoid Medicare taxes on some income. Besides the taxes, Biden wants to expand Medicare’s ability to negotiate drug costs, which began with the Inflation Reduction Act. He signed the sweeping legislation last year.
The White House said its budget plan would expand the pharmaceutical drug provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act. More drugs would be subject to price negotiations, other drugs would be brought into the negotiation process sooner and the scope of rebates would be expanded.
Taken together, Biden’s new proposals would help shore up a key trust fund that pays for Medicare, which provides health care for older adults. According to the White House, the changes would keep the fund solvent until the 2050s, about 25 years longer than currently expected.
Changes would also be made to Medicare benefits. Biden wants to limit cost sharing for some generic drugs to only $2. The idea would lower out-of-pocket costs for treating hypertension, high cholesterol and other ailments.
Joe Biden plans new taxes on the rich to help save Medicare
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Joe Biden plans new taxes on the rich to help save Medicare
- More than 65 million people rely on Medicare at a cost to taxpayers of roughly $900 billion every year
Finnish law to stop migrants at Russia border makes progress in parliament
Helsinki believes Moscow is promoting the crossings in retaliation for Finland joining NATO, which backs Ukraine against Russia’s invasion
HELSINKI: Finland’s parliament will be able to accept a government proposal to temporarily reject asylum seekers arriving across the border from Russia if some amendments are made, an influential committee of legislators said on Tuesday.
The announcement by the chair of parliament’s constitutional committee is expected to pave the way for the controversial proposal to be approved in a plenary vote in due course.
Finland has accused Russia of weaponizing migration by encouraging hundreds of asylum seekers last year from countries such as Syria and Somalia to cross the border, an assertion the Kremlin denies.
Helsinki believes Moscow is promoting the crossings in retaliation for Finland joining NATO, which backs Ukraine against Russia’s invasion.
After first shutting all land border crossings with Russia late last year, preventing regular travel, the Finnish government in May presented legislation allowing border guards to stop migrants still arriving from seeking asylum.
While the plan clearly contradicts principles included in international human rights agreements, it is still justified as a temporary emergency measure under the circumstances, committee chair Heikki Vestman told a press conference.
For the legislation to pass it must be accompanied by a procedure giving those who are rejected a possibility to appeal the decision, said Vestman, who belongs to the ruling National Coalition Party.
No migrants have arrived across the border with Russia since March 13, official data shows.
Before the vote, the committee heard 18 experts, who were all against approving the law.
But in the end, 15 of the 17 parliamentarians on the constitutional committee gave their backing, with only the Left Alliance and Green Party representatives objecting.
“For the first time the Finnish state explicitly ignores the human rights system and European Union legislation,” Left Alliance lawmaker Anna Kontula said, adding that this could set a dangerous precedent.
A Swedish diplomat says his release from a 2-year detention in Iran is like a dream
- “The dream that I sometimes did not dare to believe in has come true — to be back with my loved ones and to live my life in freedom,” said Floderus
- Sweden’s Expressen tabloid posted a video of Floderus on his knee at the airport on Saturday and appearing to be proposing to his fiancé
COPENHAGEN: The Swedish European Union diplomat who was held in Iran for two years and freed in a prisoner swap over the weekend said Tuesday that his release was “the dream that I sometimes did not dare to believe in.”
Johan Floderus and a second Swedish citizen, Saeed Azizi, returned to Sweden on Saturday in exchange for Hamid Nouri, an Iranian convicted in Stockholm of committing war crimes over his part in 1988 mass executions in the Islamic Republic.
Floderus was arrested in April 2022 at the Tehran airport while returning from a vacation with friends. He had been held for months before his family and others went public with his detention.
“After two long years, I am finally a free man, reunited with my family, my fiance, and will be able to marry,” he said in a statement to Swedish media. “The dream that I sometimes did not dare to believe in has come true — to be back with my loved ones and to live my life in freedom.”
Sweden’s Expressen tabloid posted a video of Floderus on his knee at the airport on Saturday and appearing to be proposing to his fiance. In the background stood Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, who had welcomed Floderus and Azizi at the airport and said they had faced a “hell on earth.”
The swap was mediated by Oman, a sultanate on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula that has long served as an interlocutor between Iran and the West. It came as the Muslim world celebrates Eid Al-Adha, which marks the end of the Hajj pilgrimage and typically sees prisoners freed.
The arrest of Nouri by Sweden in 2019 as he traveled there as a tourist likely sparked the detentions of the two Swedes, part of a long-running strategy by Iran since its 1979 Islamic Revolution to use those with ties abroad as bargaining chips in negotiations with the West. Iran long has contended it doesn’t hold prisoners to use in negotiations, despite years of multiple swaps with the US and other nations showing otherwise.
In 2022, the Stockholm District Court sentenced Nouri to life in prison. It identified him as an assistant to the deputy prosecutor at the Gohardasht prison outside the Iranian city of Karaj.
Saturday’s swap did not include Ahmadreza Djalali, a Swedish-Iranian expert on disaster medicine whom a UN panel long has described as being arbitrarily detained by Tehran since 2016. He is currently being held in Tehran’s Evin Prison.
In an appeal to Kristersson, Swedish broadcaster SVT on Tuesday carried an audio message from Djalali, who faces possible execution after being convicted on charges of “corruption on Earth” in 2017.
“Mister prime minister, you decided to leave me behind under huge risk of being executed,” Djalali said in the message. “You left me here helpless. Why not me? After 3,000 days.”
French far-right leader Bardella slams Mbappe on election comments
- “We must respect the French, we must respect everyone’s vote,” Bardella told CNews TV
- Forward Marcus Thuram had earlier urged people to “fight daily” to prevent Bardella’s National Rally (RN) from gaining power
PARIS: French far-right leader Jordan Bardella criticized star footballer Kylian Mbappe on Tuesday for his call on the youth to vote against the “extremes” in parliamentary elections this month.
“I have a lot of respect for our footballers, whether Marcus Thuram or Kylian Mbappe, who are icons of football and icons for youth ... But we must respect the French, we must respect everyone’s vote,” Bardella told CNews TV.
“When you’re lucky enough to have a very, very big salary, when you are a multi-millionaire ... then I’m a little embarrassed to see these athletes ... give lessons to people who can no longer make ends meet, who no longer feel safe, who do not have the chance to live in neighborhoods overprotected by security agents,” he said.
France captain Mbappe, who is hugely popular, said on Sunday, during a press conference on the eve of France’s opening match at Euro 2024 that “the extremes are knocking at the doors of power.”
Forward Marcus Thuram had earlier urged people to “fight daily” to prevent Bardella’s National Rally (RN) from gaining power.
Mbappe did not name the RN but said he supported the same values and position as Thuram.
“Kylian Mbappe is against extreme views and against ideas that divide people. I want to be proud to represent France, I don’t want to represent a country that doesn’t correspond to my values, or our values,” Mbappe said.
That call resonated with some youths in Mbappe’s old neighborhood, an underprivileged Paris suburb, but was immediately criticized by the RN.
Bardella was speaking a day after France won its Euro 2024 opening match in which Mbappe suffered a broken nose.
Bardella’s euroskeptic, anti-immigration party has its first real chance of winning national power in the June 30 and July 7 ballot. Opinion polls have consistently placed the RN first since President Emmanuel Macron’s shock decision this month to dissolve parliament.
Meanwhile, French Football Federation President Philippe Diallo told a press conference at the team’s camp in Germany that players were free to express their opinion. He urged political parties not to use these comments to their benefit.
Indian capital on alert as heat index surges to 50 degrees
- Weather patterns disrupted by El Nino, India Meteorological Department says
- Northern India was already on ‘red alert’ due to heatwaves in May
NEW DELHI: India’s capital territory of Delhi was on the meteorological department’s highest weather alert on Tuesday, with the heat index surging to 50 degrees Celsius as an unusually long hot spell continued to grip parts of the country.
Prolonged extreme heat has been roiling swaths of South Asia, covering some of the world’s most densely populated regions. In India, it has hit especially the country’s north — home to more than 400 million people — including Delhi, with its 30 million inhabitants.
As temperatures soared above 45 degrees Celsius, the India Meteorological Department issued a red alert for Delhi and the states of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab.
According to IMD, the heat index, or the feels-like temperature, was about 50 degrees Celsius due to humidity.
“If the temperature is 45 or 46 degrees Celsius, the feels-like temperature may be 50 or 51,” Dr. Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, the IMD’s director general of meteorology, told Arab News.
“The heatwave has been here in the northwest India in two spells. One spell was in the month of May and the second commenced around June 10.”
May is usually hot in the Indian subcontinent but this year the heatwave pattern is unusual, and northern parts of India were already on the IMD’s highest, “red alert” last month.
Mohapatra attributed the anomaly to the El Nino climate phenomenon, which every few years disrupts weather patterns. The El Nino effect was overlapping the warming due to climate change.
“In El Nino years, north India experiences more heatwave conditions so that is the reason,” Mohapatra said. “Climate change leads to the rising of temperature and when there is a rise in temperature, the probability of the occurrence of heatwaves increases. That doesn’t mean that every year you will have this type of heat ... (but) there is a rising trend in the frequency, duration and intensity of heatwaves.”
Additional factors making the heat insufferable in India are rapid urbanization, deforestation and water shortages.
Delhi relies on external sources for freshwater supply, as its own groundwater resources are low.
Last month, the Delhi government had to approach the Supreme Court for intervention to obtain more water from neighboring states.
“I think the government has been looking after and lots of work has been done in various departments at the national and state level. But stringent policies have to be there ... we need to have good mitigation strategies to address the issue,” said Bharti Jasrotia, technology transfer manager at Development Alternatives, a Delhi-based social enterprise and think tank involved in sustainable development.
“They should do mass-scale plantation and create more urban forest areas in and around Delhi so that Delhi gets good air and the temperature gets diluted. The government will have to address the issue of groundwater, too. Many areas of Delhi are facing water shortages.
“They should also look for a good supply of water. They should involve people in plantation drives and this will help in the coming five years.”
UN sees tripling of children killed in conflict in one year
- Warring parties were increasingly “pushing beyond boundaries of what is acceptable — and legal,” UN rights chief Volker Turk told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva
- “Children shot at. Hospitals bombed. Heavy artillery launched on entire communities. All along with hateful, divisive, and dehumanizing rhetoric“
GENEVA: Global conflicts killed three times as many children and twice as many women in 2023 than in the previous year, as overall civilian fatalities swelled 72 percent, the UN said Tuesday.
Warring parties were increasingly “pushing beyond boundaries of what is acceptable — and legal,” United Nations rights chief Volker Turk told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
They are showing “utter contempt for the other, trampling human rights at their core,” he said. “Killings and injuries of civilians have become a daily occurrence. Destruction of vital infrastructure a daily occurrence.”
“Children shot at. Hospitals bombed. Heavy artillery launched on entire communities. All along with hateful, divisive, and dehumanizing rhetoric.”
The UN rights chief said his office had gathered data indicating that last year, “the number of civilian deaths in armed conflict soared by 72 percent.”
“Horrifyingly, the data indicates that the proportion of women killed in 2023 doubled and that of children tripled, compared to the year prior,” he said.
In the Gaza Strip, Turk said he was “appalled by the disregard for international human rights and humanitarian law by parties to the conflict” and “unconscionable death and suffering.”
Since the war erupted after Hamas’s unprecedented attack inside Israel on October 7, he said “more than 120,000 people in Gaza, overwhelmingly women and children, have been killed or injured ... as a result of the intensive Israeli offensives.”
“Since Israel escalated its operations into Rafah in early May, almost one million Palestinians have been forcibly displaced yet again, while aid delivery and humanitarian access deteriorated further,” he said.
Turk also pointed to a range of other conflicts, including in Ukraine, the Democratic republic of Congo and Syria.
And in Sudan, in the grips of a more than year-long civil war, he warned the country “is being destroyed in front of our eyes by two warring parties and affiliated groups ... (who have) flagrantly cast aside the rights of their own people.”
Such devastation comes as funding to help the growing numbers of people in need is dwindling.
“As of the end of May 2024, the gap between humanitarian funding requirements and available resources stands at $40.8 billion,” Turk said.
“Appeals are funded at an average of 16.1 percent only,” he said.
“Contrast this with the almost $2.5 trillion in global military expenditure in 2023, a 6.8 percent increase in real terms from 2022,” Turk said, stressing that “this was the steepest year-on-year increase since 2009.”
“In addition to inflicting unbearable human suffering, war comes with a hefty price tag,” he said.
