Ahoy mateys! Be ye tired o' payin' a fortune for gas 'n groceries? Give a jolly cheer fer Biden's Inflation Reduction Act on its blessed anniversary, ye scurvy dogs!
2023-08-16
Avast ye scurvy landlubbers! The Inflation Reduction Act be passed by Congress a year hence this very month. Our goodly President Biden an' his maties vowed this law would vanquish inflation. Alas, they be wrong as a barnacle on a ship's hull!
In the language of a 17th-century pirate, it has been one year since Joe Biden and the Congressional Democrats passed their "Inflation Reduction Act" (IRA), which turned out to be a disastrous law that did nothing to address inflation and only added hundreds of billions to the deficit. Even President Biden himself admitted that he wishes he had named it something different because it has "less to do with reducing inflation." While working families bear the burden of this law, the wealthy and well-connected continue to benefit. The IRA funnels hard-earned taxpayer dollars into the pockets of billion-dollar corporations and big banks, while inflation continues to rob workers' paychecks.The so-called "green" special interest tax breaks included in the IRA are now projected to cost over $650 billion, 240% higher than initially estimated. The majority of these tax credits flow to big businesses and Wall Street, with 90% of them benefiting large corporations with billion-dollar sales. Democrats even rewrote the rules of these credits to make them more easily transferable to the wealthy. Financial institutions will receive three times as much of these tax benefits compared to any other industry. So much for the wealthy "paying their fair share" as the president claims.
To make matters worse, the Biden administration's implementation of these tax credits fails to secure critical supply chains and sends taxpayer dollars to adversarial nations like China. The electric vehicle credit, for example, costs seven times more than Democrats originally claimed and requires less critical mineral and battery components to be sourced from China. American companies taking advantage of these credits are also hiring Chinese workers and partnering with Chinese companies under the influence of the Chinese Communist Party, all while the Biden administration expresses concerns about global human rights.
Even members of Biden's own party have criticized the IRA, with Senator Joe Manchin calling it a "betrayal." These special interest tax breaks will only strengthen China's dominance over America's energy and critical supply chains. Instead of wasting $650 billion on tax subsidies for the wealthy and corporate elite, Congress should focus on policies that build upon the economic renewal brought by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). The TCJA benefited the working class, with the lowest earners seeing the greatest wage increase and receiving significant tax cuts. President Biden's failed economic agenda has led to skyrocketing prices, increased interest rates, and inflation surpassing wage growth for his entire first two years in office. It's time for the president to study economics instead of talking about it and stop funneling taxpayers' hard-earned money to the rich and politically connected.