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Here is the Heritage Take on the top issues today. Please reply to this email to arrange an interview.
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- Though teachers unions are well known for donating huge sums to Democratic candidates, a closer look at donor data reveals that the unions have spent the last six years quietly slipping millions of dollars into the pockets of Republican candidates for state legislatures in contested primary races.
- According to databases maintained by Open Secrets and Follow the Money, the largest teachers unions in 32 states have drastically increased donations to Republican state house, assembly, and senate candidates since 2018—donating up to $117,700 to individual candidates in a Republican primary.
- Teachers unions are the largest donor to Democratic campaigns in the United States, with their unions and affiliated political action committees donating $55.3 million to Democratic primary and general candidates in congressional elections in 2022 and $66.5 million to Democratic primary and general congressional and presidential candidates in 2020. In 2022, teachers unions only donated $26,050 total to Republican primary and general congressional candidates.
- But in state legislative races, as opposed to congressional ones, things are a bit different, and some Republicans started getting a lot more support from teachers unions starting around 2018—especially those running in districts that typically elect Republicans to office.
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- For the second year in a row, the Biden administration plans to reduce payments to Medicare’s private health plans.
- This comes as Medicare Advantage—the system of private, competing health plans—enrolls more than 33 million people, well over half of the entire Medicare population.
- Earlier this year, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued an “advance notice” of Medicare Advantage’s payment rates for 2025.
- The Berkeley Research Group recently conducted a detailed analysis of CMS data in a report and concluded that the CMS changes in 2025, taking all of the technical adjustments into account, would result in a 1% Medicare Advantage payment cut “per month per beneficiary.”
- When rising medical costs collide headlong into falling Medicare payments, patients get squeezed by higher premiums or out-of-pocket costs or less access to the extra benefits and services they want.
- The Left’s game plan is to stop the growth of Medicare Advantage—driving seniors back into traditional Medicare.
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- There haven’t been many worse weeks for electric vehicles. Apple stated that it will no longer try to build an EV, Ford announced a pause in its delivery of the new F-150 Lightning pickup truck and Mercedes no longer plans to go all electric by 2030.
- Yet reality is more easily ignored at the White House.President Joe Biden has proposed rules requiring 60% of new cars sold to be battery-powered electric by 2030 and 66% battery-powered electric by 2032.
- But despite generous tax credits for manufacturers for plants to build the electric vehicles and batteries, and tax credits for Americans to buy EVs, Americans are not purchasing the vehicles in sufficient quantities to make the proposed rules attainable.
- EVs are sitting on dealers’ lots, and over 4,500 auto dealers have written to President Biden asking him to delay the EV mandate.
- The Administration is finding that it can offer Americans EV tax credits, but it can’t make them buy the vehicles.
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