Manchin-Schumer Inflation Reduction Bill Will Do the Opposite

Having worked as a staffer on Capitol Hill for a number of years, I know from experience that cynical members of Congress will often disguise the true content of legislation through the use of a legislative title that is misleading at best and a patent lie at worst.  

As George Orwell wrote in 1984, this is the doublespeak of the Thought Police who insist that “War is peace.  Freedom is slavery.  Ignorance is strength.”  The goal is to deploy a compliant, dishonest media to repeat the title of the legislation ad nauseam until the lie is embedded in the news fabric and the truth is hidden from the people.   As the propaganda minister for the National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party, Joseph Goebbels noted, “if you repeat a lie often enough it becomes the truth.”

The distressing news this week from the U.S. Capitol is the Manchin-Schumer legislation, deceptively titled the ‘Inflation Reduction Act,’ which just passed the Senate on a party line tie vote broken by VP Kamala Harris. The truthful title would be “The Inflation-Recession Act.” 

At a time when inflation is burning up an average $6,800 from two worker families, the so-called Inflation Reduction Act would impose punitive tax increases, deepen the recession, savage household income, and accelerate price increases.

According to the Senate’s Joint Committee on Taxation, “taxes will increase by $16.7 billion on American taxpayers earning less than $200,000,” proving “that the Biden pledge to not raise taxes on anyone earning less than $400,000 is shattered.”

To summarize, this 725-page bill—laden as it is with union and Green Pork—strongly favors unions and specific projects in certain, often blue, states.

Let’s remember this plan has been sold to Americans as a way to combat the surging inflation created by the very people who are now championing this plan.

However, because the spending provisions kick in sooner (they always do with tax-and-spend bills) than the revenue-raising provisions this bill will actually increase the deficit in the first few years and—if it ever actually does—only begin to reduce the deficit in 2027 according to the Penn Wharton Budget Model.

How’s that going to address our crushing current inflation if there will be no effect on inflation for 5 years?

It won’t, of course, because that was never really the plan to begin with.  What the Left is really trying to do is re-engineer the U.S. economy with another huge expansion of government.   In fact, that’s one of the things that is so acutely disappointing about what Senator Joe Manchin is doing with this bill. 

Recall that over the last year and a half Sen. Manchin (along with Senator Kyrsten Sinema) was instrumental in blocking the $5 trillion Build Back Better plan which would have been an unprecedented expansion of government.  However, this so-called “skinny” version also won’t shrink the deficit and will constitute an enormous entitlement expansion that already struggling American taxpayers, directly or indirectly, will pay for.

And for what reason purportedly? Because of so-called “Climate Change.”  All of these Green New Deal efforts by the federal government to reduce carbon emissions will have virtually no effect on the temperature of the planet.  In fact, the impact on CO2 and temperature is “miniscule” according to Princeton’s Jose’ Luis Cruz ‘Alvarez and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg.  Further, the National Academy of Sciences stated in 2013 regarding these episodes of huge federal spending on climate issues that they are a “poor tool for reducing greenhouse gases and achieving climate change objectives.”  

This worldwide “climate” alarm is based upon the fact that the world has warmed by 1.1 degree Celsius since the late 1800s and even that is based upon multiple factors.

Unfortunately, none of that matters to the Climate Change Religionists, many of whom are profiting enormously on this Kill Fossil Fuel—Promote Renewables con job. 

America is technologically decades away from being entirely free of fossil fuels and in a place where we may conceivably rely solely on renewable energy to sustain us.  But today, Americans are far more concerned about high gas and food prices which this kind of federal debt spending and worsening inflation will only make worse.

This dishonestly named legislation will result in both a policy failure and tax increase on all Americans and especially hard-working Americans already devastated by the enormous Biden-Democrat inflation tax.

The midterm elections can’t come soon enough so that Americans can change the dangerous trajectory America is now on.