Inflation Reduction Act

The Inflation Reduction Act is absurdly named Democrat legislation that passed the U.S. Senate in on August 7, 2022 by a vote of only 51-50, without a single Republican supporting it and the Vice President Kamala Harris having to cast the tie-breaking vote. Overall this legislation spends a total of $430 billion, which its health care expenditures are included.^[1]

This bill is one of the largest tax increases in history, hiking corporate taxes substantially for the first time in decades. It is for that reason it is falsely named an inflation reduction bill, because it will supposedly narrow the deficit. In fact, raising taxes rarely reduces the deficit because economic activity decreases.

The bill wastes $369 billion on so-called climate change and energy-limiting provisions that, according to liberal cheerleaders for this boondoggle, "will transform how Americans get their energy and shape the country’s climate and industrial policy for decades."^[2]

Leftists point out that this is four times the size of the wasteful green energy incentives in Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

In addition to raising corporate taxes, this bill would supposedly more than triple green energy production, by allegedly adding 550 gigawatts of electricity from wind, solar and other renewable energy sources.^[3]

Analysis[edit]

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) caved into providing the vote to enact an anti-coal, anti-oil energy bill when Dems fraudulently called it the Inflation Reduction Act. After the bill passed by 51-50 in the Senate, suddenly liberals began referring to it as the climate change bill.

This boondoggle is a massive handout to California, the electric car company Tesla, and other suppliers of inefficient green energy. Electric cars are California’s largest manufactured export, and this federal bill removes existing limits on a $7,500 tax credit for purchasing an electric car. Immediately after Biden signed the bill, General Motors raised the cost of its electric vehicles by $7,500, and the Ford Motor Company raised the costs of their electric vehicles by $8,500.^[4]

This bill also creates a $4,500 tax credit for buying a used electric car, which harms the Detroit-based producers of the more efficient gasoline-power autos. People now have a taxpayer-subsidized reason to buy a used electric car, rather than a new traditional car from Ford.

This bill was heavily supported by Big Tech companies located on the Left Coast, including the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. By transferring wealth from the Midwest and South to California, it is no surprise that California companies like Intel would support this.

This legislation adds tax credits for battery manufacturing, wind turbines, and rooftop solar panels. Offshore wind turbines are exorbitantly expensive and produce less than 1% of the world’s electricity, in addition to being an eyesore that blights the beautiful horizon.

Tossing hundreds of billions of dollars down the climate change rabbit hole is not productive, and will not reduce inflation. Some of that money simply flows back to fund liberal political candidates, who already have fundraising advantages over conservative.

Manchin “sold West Virginia out,” Trump declared on August 6, 2022, in his speech in Dallas to the Conservative Political Action Conference, known as CPAC. At his rally in Wisconsin the night before, Trump promised to campaign against Manchin in West Virginia, a state Trump won by 40 points.

Manchin agreed to this bad bill in exchange for a promise by other Democrats to allow the Mountain Valley Pipeline to complete construction. A federal appellate court has interfered with completion of that project but Manchin has reportedly received assurances that jurisdiction will taken away from the court to interfere further. Withdrawal of jurisdiction is used by the Left to advance their goals.

Breaking ATR anti-tax pledge?[edit]

As of August 7, 2022, 44 senators, 181 representatives, and 16 governors have signed the pledge against increasing taxes by Americans for Tax Reform (ATR).^[5]

Those levels fluctuate with elections. For example, as of November 2012, 238 representatives and 41 senators had signed the ATR anti-tax pledge. In the next Congress sworn in January 2013, "ATR claims 219 representatives and 39 senators as adherents-although a small handful have already backed away from their commitments."^[6]

See also[edit]

• Biden recession

References[edit]