Editors at National Review Online call for the end of one of the worst-named pieces of federal legislation in recent memory.
With the Republican House majority officially secured, Republicans will have a trifecta come January 20. They need to use their newfound power to repeal the so-called Inflation Reduction Act in its entirety.
Democrats passed the IRA without a single Republican vote through budget reconciliation. Republicans can repeal it without a single Democratic vote through budget reconciliation.The law never had anything to do with inflation. Immediately after Congress passed it, the media called it what it always was: a climate and health-care law. Joe Biden himself has said more than once that the law wasn’t about reducing inflation.
Democrats gleefully enriched the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents IRS employees, with $80 billion in additional IRS funding, and the NTEU has been sure to send them a thank-you note each year since, along with the normal 95+ percent of its pAC donations. Extra revenue raised from tax enforcement is nowhere near what was promised, but for Democrats it’s about the spending, not the results.
The IRA implemented price controls that have reduced clinical trials of drugs. That was a foreseeable consequence. University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan predicted it in … 2022, but Democrats didn’t care.
Medicare Part D plans have been disappearing or increasing in price as a result of the changes the IRA made to the program. The Biden administration has been quietly trying to bail out insurers to paper over the law’s failure.
The Biden administration has interpreted the IRA in such a way that many of its energy tax credits are more expansive than what the Congressional Budget Office scored when the law was being debated. Because some of the provisions don’t have time limits, the law’s cost is theoretically infinite, but if it is allowed to continue, it will likely cost more than three times what the American people were told when it became law.
