In 2024, the Biden administration initiated a temporary, taxpayer-subsidized Medicare Part D prescription drug plan for seniors in response to the aftermath of the pandemic
It was never intended to be permanent. The Trump administration in 2025 continued the temporary subsidy for a while. Now, in 2026, it is allowing the temporary subsidy to expire.
Within nanoseconds of the decision, Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer went to social media declaring, “The Trump administration is actively raising prescription drug costs for 25 million seniors… Heartless, cruel, and completely by choice.“
This is the way the game operates.
Elected officials of both parties love to give away things to their constituencies. At the same time, they dread the idea of raising taxes.
One of the ways they sugarcoat it is by claiming the tax increase or the subsidy won’t hit taxpayers that hard because it will only be temporary, to deal with an economic contingency.
But lo and behold, we see time after time that temporary becomes permanent.
Look at the incredible outrage that the liberal media heaped upon the Trump administration for finally saying that the so-called temporary asylum given to residents of Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela must finally come to an end.
This so-called “temporary” measure in the case of Haitians has now been in effect for 20 years. How could it be cruel to say that temporary must actually be treated as temporary?
The same applies to the suspension of student loan repayments during Covid. Trump got eviscerated for saying that, once the pandemic was over, it was time for borrowers to continue their obligations to repay the loans they had taken out.
Then there were the temporary subsidies to Obamacare put in place by Biden during the pandemic. Lower-wage earners were already receiving taxpayer subsidies for the government program, but those taxpayer-assisted dollars went on steroids during Covid, supposedly just to get us through the hard times.
When Republicans in 2025 said the economy had recovered and Covid was in the rearview mirror, they phased out only the additional pandemic subsidies. Democrats in Congress and their allies in the liberal media eviscerated Republicans for supposedly cutting Medicaid.
The same occurs when dealing with tax increases. Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo implemented a temporary millionaire’s tax increase after the real estate crash. A decade and a half later, the so-called “temporary” surcharge continues to hit taxpayers and is unlikely to ever be removed.
It’s too much to expect from the political opposition to be honest about what these temporary subsidies are about. But what we need is an honest media to be a fair arbitrator in these scenarios. If the media joins forces with the political opposition in bashing those who seek to allow for temporary tax increases and increased subsidies to terminate, we will, in essence, be eliminating the distinction between temporary and permanent. That will dissuade passage of many programs in the future that may be truly needed on a purely temporary basis.