The Biden administration is seeking to increase its Medicare budget by levying taxes on “the rich.” This comes on the heels of the North Carolina legislatures brokered deal for Medicaid Expansion. In multiple ways, tax increases may be on the way.

A recession is looming. While it’s unclear exactly how punishing it will be, the economy is in an unstable place, inflation remains high, and the Fed will continue to raise interest rates. Given all that, it seems like the threat of raising taxes wouldn’t be the smartest idea, but that’s what the Biden administration is set on doing this in order to have more money for “drug price negotiations.”

This will impact those with unearned income above $400,000, who will see their taxes increased from 3.8% to 5%. He claims that this will make Medicare solvent until at least 2050.

In a guest essay for The New York Times, Biden said, “Millions of Americans work their whole lives, paying into Medicare with every working day — starting with their first jobs, even as teenagers. Medicare is more than a government program. It’s the rock-solid guarantee that Americans have counted on to be there for them when they retire.”

He’s going to do this by taking money from hardworking Americans.

“Let’s ask the wealthiest to pay just a little bit more of their fair share, to strengthen Medicare for everyone in the long term,” he argues. 

But what is their “fair share?” Given their wealth, they may never have to touch Medicare, so why is the government requiring them to pay more into a system unbeneficial to them?

Biden goes onto say, “Let’s ask them to pay their fair share so that the millions of workers who helped them build that wealth can retire with dignity and the Medicare they paid into. Republican plans that would protect billionaires from a penny more in taxes – but won’t protect a retired firefighter’s hard-earned Medicare benefits – are just detached from the reality that hardworking families live with every day.”

It’s subtle, but Biden is trying to get Americans to believe that this will just affect billionaires. It won’t. 

“Unearned income” is defined by the Internal Revenue Service as “investment-type income such as taxable interest, ordinary dividends, and capital gain distributions. It also includes unemployment compensation, taxable social security benefits, pensions, annuities, cancellation of debt, and distributions of unearned income from a trust.”

So yes, if you have a pension worth $450,000 and you decide to withdraw it for your retirement, you’ll be taxed the same as a billionaire. 

Biden has been noted as saying several times that he just wants “the rich” to pay their “fair share,” but when you look at the bottom line, he’s not just impacting Elon Musk as much as hard-working Americans with pensions. 

Despite what government officials want people to believe, efforts to “tax the rich” seem to impact everyone but the rich.