DNC National Press Secretary ⁨Emilia Rowland⁩ released the following statement after the White House released the Biden-Harris Lowering Costs Agenda:

“President Biden is delivering for hardworking families, taking historic action to lower everyday costs from household items to health care while holding greedy corporate execs, union-busting CEOs, and tax-cheating billionaires accountable so every American can have a fair shot. While Trump is hellbent on rigging the economy for the ultra-wealthy and his billionaire donors at middle-class families’ expense, President Biden and Democrats up and down the ballot are fighting to stop corporate price gouging and grow the economy from the bottom up and middle out.”

President Biden’s administration is protecting consumers and taking on Big Tech and Big Pharma.

ABC News: “In the nearly three years since President Joe Biden appointed Lina Khan as chair of the Federal Trade Commission, the government agency has taken on some of America’s largest corporations, filing lawsuits or taking other actions to challenge Big Tech, Big Pharma and Big Business.

“‘The FTC has been squarely focused on making sure we’re using all of our tools and authorities to protect the American people from illegal business practices,’ Khan told ABC News ‘This Week’ co-anchor Jonathan Karl in an interview that aired Sunday.”

ABC News: “The Biden administration escalated its legal assault on Big Tech this week with a case against the world’s second-largest company, Apple, over alleged abuse of its iPhone monopoly.

“The lawsuit comes months after federal agencies filed a lawsuit against Amazon and prosecuted a trial against Google — both of which targeted the respective companies’ market dominance.”

Vox: “His administration has also tackled monopolies like it’s the Roosevelt era, filing a flurry of sweeping lawsuits against major companies, including four Big Tech companies, on the grounds that they are harming competition in their industries and, therefore, American consumers.”

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: “Biden-Harris Administration to Make First Offer for Drug Price Negotiation Program, Launches New Resource Hub to Help People Access Lower-Cost Drugs”

Business Insider: “The Biden administration has launched investigations and antitrust lawsuits against several mega corporations, many in the tech sector, that it accuses of behaving like monopolies — and it’s setting him apart from his predecessors.”

President Biden’s economic plan is taking action to lower costs on everyday grocery items, and increase food assistance for families across America.

Biden-Harris Lowering Costs Agenda: “Providing the typical low-income family of four about $2,000 more for groceries each year by improving SNAP—lifting about 3 million people out of poverty, including 400,000 Black children, 350,000 Hispanic children, and 18,000 Asian American children—and launching Summer EBT for nearly 21 million children.”

White House ICYMI: “President Biden’s top economic priority is lowering costs for American families—including calling on grocery chains making record profits to lower prices. The President and his team have been meeting with CEOs and business leaders, including Target CEO Brian Cornell, to discuss the elevated costs that families face. Target, Walmart, and other grocery chains have begun to answer the President’s call to lower prices for household goods.”

Washington Post: “This week, Target announced it would lower prices on roughly 5,000 items, including staples such as milk, produce, bread and coffee, as well as diapers and pet food. The reductions will ‘collectively save consumers millions of dollars this summer,’ the company said in a news release. The White House — which has been pressing retailers to lower prices — took credit for the rollbacks, posting on X: ‘President Biden called on grocery chains making record profits to lower prices for consumers — and they’re answering the call.’”

President Biden is fighting to make housing more affordable for people of all ages.

White House Fact Sheet: “The President’s budget… Increases the Supply of Affordable Housing Financed by Existing HUD programs.”

“In addition, the Budget provides $931 million to support housing for older adults and $257 million to support housing for persons with disabilities.”

White House Fact Sheet: “President Biden is calling on Congress to pass a mortgage relief credit that would provide middle-class first-time homebuyers with an annual tax credit of $5,000 a year for two years. This is the equivalent of reducing the mortgage rate by more than 1.5 percentage points for two years on the median home, and will help more than 3.5 million middle-class families purchase their first home over the next two years.”

Biden-Harris Lowering Costs Agenda: “Their Administration is cutting mortgage insurance premiums and expanding rental assistance, and they are calling on Congress to help build more homes and lower costs for homebuyers and renters. Their plan will give more Americans a chance at the American Dream. Congressional Republicans voted to raise housing prices by cutting programs that increase affordable housing and provide assistance to renters.”

HuffPost: “Biden is eager to get credit for lowering housing costs, proposing a $10,000 mortgage relief tax credit for families making less than $250,000 a year during his State of the Union address.”

President Biden is delivering on student loan debt forgiveness costs and making childcare more affordable. 

Forbes: “How Biden Forgiving Another $9 Billion In Student Loan Debt Helps Close The Racial Wealth Gap”

“The burden of student loan debt has reached crisis levels, disproportionately affecting students of color and amplifying the racial wealth gap. Now, President Biden’s latest step will help 125,000 borrowers by erasing $9 billion in debt through existing programs. This debt load is not distributed evenly across populations, it falls disproportionately on students of color and their families who are actively trying to close the racial wealth gap.”

Biden-Harris Lowering Costs Agenda: “Lowering child care costs for more than 100,000 lower-income families by capping costs at no more than 7% of their income, saving an average of $2,400 a year… Saved families $1,250 per child on child care by helping more than 225,000 child care providers that serve as many as 10 million children stay open during the pandemic.”

CNN: “About 4 million people have seen their federal student debt canceled under Biden, totaling about $144 billion.”

Guardian: “Biden launches ‘most affordable ever’ student loan repayment plan”

Washington Post: “Biden administration cancels $1.2B in student loans with new repayment plan”

President Biden is cracking down on junk fees, making life-saving medications more affordable, and bringing more good-paying jobs to middle-class Americans.

CNN: “More Americans can now get insulin for $35”

“Congress, the White House and new players in the market have increased pressure on insulin manufacturers to lower their prices. Eli Lilly and Sanofi announced that they would institute $35 caps shortly after President Joe Biden called on drugmakers to do so in his State of the Union address last year. 

“Medicare enrollees now pay no more than $35 a month for each of their insulin prescriptions, thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, which Democratic lawmakers pushed through Congress in 2022.”

USA Today: “Insulin $35 cap price now in effect, lowering costs for many Americans with diabetes”

“In 2022, a sweeping climate and health bill called the Inflation Reduction Act capped insulin costs at $35 a month for Medicare enrollees. In February 2023, Biden urged Congress to extend that out-of-pocket cap to younger Americans with private health insurance.”

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: “As a result of negotiations, people with Medicare will have access to innovative, life-saving treatments at lower costs to Medicare and taxpayers.”

Center for American Progress: “Communities That Lost Manufacturing Jobs Are Main Beneficiaries of Biden Administration’s New Industrial Policy”

Yahoo News: “Under President Biden, however, a manufacturing boom finally seems to be getting started. Since the beginning of 2022, construction spending on new factories has more than doubled, from an annualized rate of $91 billion in January 2022 to $189 billion in April 2023, the latest data available. That’s the biggest jump, by far, in data going back to 2002.”

The Hill: “A surge in manufacturing construction across the country is grabbing the attention of economists and workers on the ground as legislative efforts to reinvigorate the U.S. industrial base are bearing fruit.”

CNN: “Credit card late fees capped at $8 as part of Biden crackdown on junk fees”

“Federal regulators finalized a rule on Tuesday to cap most credit card late fees at $8 as part of a broader push by the Biden administration to eliminate junk fees. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau estimates the new regulation, first proposed last summer, will save families more than $10 billion a year by cutting fees from an average of $32.”

Washington Post: “U.S. caps credit card late charges in new Biden crackdown on junk fees”

“The rules arrived as part of a suite of fresh federal efforts to promote competition and crack down on unfair or illegal pricing across the economy, which President Biden has blasted as one of the primary sources of rising costs facing American families over the past year.”

Yahoo News: “Under President Biden, however, a manufacturing boom finally seems to be getting started. Since the beginning of 2022, construction spending on new factories has more than doubled, from an annualized rate of $91 billion in January 2022 to $189 billion in April 2023, the latest data available. That’s the biggest jump, by far, in data going back to 2002.”

REMINDER: While President Biden works to lower costs for hardworking families, Donald Trump’s MAGAnomics agenda disproportionately benefits the ultra-wealthy and big corporations – and he has promised to double down in a second term. 

USA Today: “‘Biden’s policies are better for the economy,’ says Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. ‘They lead to more growth and less inflation.

“According to a Moody’s study, Trump’s plan would trigger a recession by mid-2025 and an economy that grows an average 1.3% annually during his four-year term vs. 2.1% under Biden. (The latter is in line with average growth in the decade before the pandemic.)

“Next year, under a Trump administration, inflation would rise from the current 3.3% to 3.6%, well above the 2.4% forecast under Biden, the Moody’s analysis shows. Compared with Biden, the U.S. would have 3.2 million fewer jobs and a 4.5% unemployment rate, a half percentage point higher, at the end of a Trump tenure.”

Center for American Progress: “Trump’s latest idea to replace all income taxes with tariffs is mathematically impossible, but even if it were feasible, it would dramatically increase income inequality and raise taxes for the bottom 90 percent of households. It would raise taxes for middle-income households by $5,100 to $8,300 while cutting taxes for the top 0.1 percent by at least $1.5 million annually.”

Guardian: “They were billed as a ‘middle-class miracle’ but according to a new book Donald Trump’s $1.5tn tax cuts have helped billionaires pay a lower rate than the working class for the first time in history.”

Washington Post: “Trump and his advisers have discussed deeper cuts to both individual and corporate tax rates that would build on his controversial 2017 tax law … Further cutting corporate taxes … would primarily benefit large firms.”

Bloomberg: “[Trump] intends to center his economic plans on extending and deepening the Republican tax cuts from 2017.”