Previewing the 2024 State of the Union: A look at President Biden’s Policy Asks

President Joe Biden is slated to deliver his State of the Union (SOTU) address where he will outline his re-election campaign platform ahead of his rematch with former President Donald Trump in the 2024 general election. The president is expected to tout progress on key policy items contained within laws passed during his administration — including the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), and CHIPS and Science Act — as well as actions the administration has taken to advance various issues during President Biden’s first term. Reading in-between the lines of political messaging and posturing, the president’s speech will outline numerous policy positions on issues pertaining to health care, costs and “junk fees,” tax policy, and more. While many of these asks will be dead-on-arrival in a divided government, they are nevertheless worth monitoring from the standpoint of future executive branch actions, as well as if Democrats win control of Washington in the 2024 election.

As of this writing, here are some of the specific policy positions that President Biden will outline during his SOTU:

Health Care

• Expand the number of Medicare drugs that can be negotiated.
• Allow certain drugs to qualify for negotiation sooner upon their entry into the market.
• Extend Medicare’s inflation rebate policy to the commercial market
• Cap Medicare cost sharing at $2 for common generic drugs.
• Apply surprise billing rules to ground ambulance providers.
• Provide Medicaid-like coverage to individuals in states that have not expanded Medicaid.
• Improve access to home- and community-based services and support the caregiver workforce.
• Expand mental health coverage in Medicare and private insurance and extend incentive programs to address mental health provider shortages.
• Limit the availability of “junk insurance.”
• Impose requirements to ensure adequate staffing in nursing homes to improve care.

Tax

• Increase the Medicare tax rate in income above $400,000.
• Raise the corporate tax rate to 28 percent.
• Raise the stock buyback tax to four percent.
• Create a new corporate minimum tax of 21 percent.
• Create a 25 percent “billionaire tax.”
• Increase and expand the Child Tax Credit.
• Restrict tax deductions for corporations that pay over $1 million to executives.