On July 27, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) announced that he had reached a deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to pledge his support for a $700 billion spending bill, which is supposed to bring in $725 billion in new revenue to the federal government and reduce the deficit by $292 billion annually.
But a look inside the text of the bill reveals a series of policies that will likely serve only to further increase consumer prices, suppress wages, expand the scope of federal audits, decrease the value of retirement portfolios, reduce medical innovation, and further escalate already high energy prices.
The bill, dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act, was the product of a year of harried negotiations, compromises, and disappointments for Democrats as they tried to pass the much larger $1.75 trillion Build Back Better (BBB) Act….