Vice President Kamala Harris was the first to speak at a community college in Maryland on Thursday afternoon. She stood at the lectern, which bore the presidential seal, and introduced President Joe Biden. It was the first public appearance the two have made together since he decided not to seek re-election last month.
Harris, who became the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee earlier this month, was not onstage at Prince George’s Community College Field House during the incumbent president’s speech, but hats bearing her name were sold outside the small gymnasium and women inside the arena wore T-shirts supporting her. Depending on the outcome of the Nov. 5 presidential election, Harris could become the country’s first female commander in chief.
Event on Thursday — allegedly to publicize the reduction in prescription drug costs due to the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which took effect two years ago on Friday — had implicit and explicit political undertones from the start. Angela Alsobrooks, the executive director of Prince George’s County and Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Maryland, was the first to take the stage in her home district, where Biden has already visited twice in the past two years.
The man Alsobrook’s seat will be filled, Democratic U.S. Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland, who is not seeking re-election after nearly sixty years of public service, alluded to the national political purpose of the event when he mentioned Harris’s tie-breaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act.
“She passed this because she is president of the Senate,” Cardin said of Harris. “President is a good title for her.” The remark drew applause from the friendly crowd in the packed gymnasium.
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“This time we have finally defeated the pharmaceutical industry,” says President Biden
The Biden-backed bill, which includes provisions on climate, finance and Medicare, received only the votes of Democrats and independents in August 2022, so Harris had to break the 50-50 tie with Republicans in the upper house.
Democrats celebrated a provision of the law on Thursday that allows the federal government to negotiate the prices of certain drugs with pharmaceutical companies through the Medicare program. Biden said in his speeches on Thursday that he had already introduced a law in the 1970s together with Democratic U.S. Senator Frank Church of Idaho that would allow such negotiations.
“This time we finally beat the pharmaceutical industry,” Biden said, referring to the bargaining power for the Medicare program, which recently celebrated its 59th anniversary.th year since it took effect. He added that the negotiating power will save taxpayers “billions of dollars,” a figure estimated by Biden administration officials at $6 billion in initial savings, according to a Washington Post report.
Efforts to reduce drug costs in recent years were led by the late Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-7.thwho, as chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, held that committee’s first hearing after winning a Democratic majority in the House on the issue of prescription drug pricing in 2018.
Biden on Thursday highlighted the administration’s efforts to cap the cost of the drug insulin for seniors at $35 a month. He said companies previously charged several hundred dollars a month for the drug, which costs between $10 and $13 a month to manufacture and package. Biden said drug companies spent $400 million lobbying Congress last year.
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“If we work together, there is nothing beyond our capabilities,” says Biden
The burden of the political moment seemed to weigh more heavily on the president than on the families caused by the high costs, as he spoke on stage for about twenty minutes after Harris’s introduction.
Of the man who appointed her vice president, Harris said, “Few leaders in our country have done more.”
Biden did not mention his predecessor by name in his remarks, but referred to “Project 2025,” a 900-page presidential planning document prepared last year by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank based in Washington. In a section on the Department of Health and Human Services, the document says the “negotiating program” on drug prices should be eliminated.
Former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee whose former Cabinet members worked on the document, has sought to distance himself from the document. Former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, wrote an opinion piece last month opposing Project 2025, claiming it “shreds” American principles.
Biden, the President of the United States who is not running for re-election, had a more concise, if less clearly defined, plan for next year than the President’s conservative planning document.
“Let me tell you what our project is in 2025,” Biden said: “We’re going to finish them off.”
That remark, 81 days before the election, ran counter to the tenor of Biden’s oft-repeated closing remarks, made earlier this year after promising to help Maryland rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge, and which he reiterated in closing on Thursday.
“If we work together, there is nothing beyond our capabilities,” he said.
Biden left the lectern with the presidential seal. Vice President Harris rejoined the stage. He took her hand, raised it in the air and pointed at her.
As the couple left the stage, the crowd in the gym cheered and Jackie Wilson’s 1967 song “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher” blared from the speakers.
The 2024 presidential elections are scheduled for November 5.
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Dwight A. Weingarten is an investigative reporter covering the Maryland House of Representatives and state affairs. Reach him at [email protected] or on Twitter at @DwightWeingart2.
