Commentary
The first thing to remember about the reconciliation bill Sens. Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer agreed to Wednesday is that, despite its utterly preposterous name, it has absolutely zero to do with inflation. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 is crammed with the very same spending, corporate welfare, price fixing and tax hikes that were part of Build Back Better—long-desired progressive wish-list agenda items. Pumping hundreds of billions into the economy will do nothing to alleviate inflation. The opposite.
Let’s also remember the Democrats’ deflection on inflation last year—claiming it was “transitory” and “no serious economist” is “suggesting there’s unchecked inflation on the way,” and so on—was all part of a concerted political effort to ignore the problem long enough to cram through a $5.5 trillion iteration of their agenda. And when inflation suddenly became non-transitory, and politically problematic, the Biden administration argued that more spending would relieve inflation. They don’t care about the economy, as long as dependency is being expanded….