by Jill Zuckman
Sen. John McCain is expected to propose requiring more affluent senior citizens to pay higher premiums for their Medicare prescription drug benefit during a major economic speech today in Pittsburgh outlining his views on taxes, trade, the federal budget, health, education and energy.
He will also propose a one-year freeze on domestic discretionary spending pending a review of every program, department and agency in the federal government, his economic advisers said. The freeze will not apply to spending for the military or for veterans’ benefits.
“Discretionary spending is a term people throw around a lot in Washington, while actual discretion is seldom exercised,” McCain will say, according to his prepared remarks. “Instead, every program comes with a built-in assumption that it should go on forever, and its budget increase forever. My administration will change that way of thinking.”
Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett Packard and one of McCain’s economic advisers, said the senator is looking for “a top to bottom review of the federal government.”
One of McCain’s newest tax proposals is a plan to increase the exemption for children from $3500 to $7,000 per child in every family in the country.
McCain expects to save about $2 billion by asking more prosperous Americans to pay higher premiums under the Medicare prescription drug program. For example, seniors who earn more than $82,000 a year would pay an additional $25.80 per month, according to one campaign document. The change would affect about 1 million Medicare beneficiaries or 5 percent of the program.
“Many retired Americans face the terrible reality of deciding whether to buy food, pay rent or buy their prescriptions. And their government should help them,” McCain is expected to say. “But when we added the prescription drug benefit to Medicare, a new and costly entitlement, we included many people who are more than capable of purchasing their own medicine without assistance from taxpayers who struggle to purchase their own. People like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet don’t need their prescriptions underwritten by taxpayers.”
