By Spencer Brown | Townhall.com
AP Photo/Alex Goodlett
Nearly one year since President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) into law, he's not getting much help defending one massive piece of the inflation-triggered spending binge Biden and congressional Democrats foisted on the American people — at least not from the Associated Press.
According to AP, "it’s increasingly clear that immediately curbing prices wasn’t the point" of the Inflation Reduction Act that certainly seems to have been titled to feign an attempt to rein in price hikes that hit 40-year highs under Biden's economic policies. Why, it's almost as if Biden and Democrats lied about the purpose and effect of their legislation to get it passed for phony reasons because it's actual consequences would have been too unpopular to pass on their own...
Sure, as AP notes, the rate of inflation has slowed since last year. Yet critically — as Americans know all too well — inflation remains multiple percentage points above the Biden administration high of more than nine percent reached last summer. In all, the goods and services Americans need remain more than 16 percent more expensive than they were when Biden took office. And, despite inflation showing some signs of slowing in recent months, AP pointed out that "most economists say little to none of the drop came from the law" which supposedly promised to do so.
Here's what a few of them told AP:
"I can’t think of any mechanism by which it would have brought down inflation to date,” said Harvard University economist Jason Furman"
Alex Arnon, an economic and budget analyst for the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Wharton Budget Model, offers a similar assessment.
“We can say with pretty strong confidence that it was mostly other factors that have brought inflation down,’’ he said. “The IRA has just not been a significant factor.’’
Instead, it appears the name for the legislation was all part of Biden and his goons' Trojan horse plan to force radical climate policies through before the midterms.
As Townhall reported last year, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) was clear then that the Inflation Reduction Act would not actually reduce inflation. Still, Biden and Democrats kept spinning their phony promises of better economic conditions — messaging they kept up for almost one year.
John Hasson noted earlier for Townhall that Biden had even pivoted away from focusing on the false name for his much bragged about piece of legislation, admitting last week that the Inflation Reduction Act wasn't really about reducing inflation at all.
Instead, as John noted, Biden's latest "pivot is crucial because the Inflation Reduction Act’s identity as an anti-inflation bill made it possible for Democrats to pass the legislation in the Senate...West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin refused to support an early version of the bill, but changed his mind after Democrats slightly altered the bill and rebranded it as The Inflation Reduction Act."
That minor mostly titular change saw Manchin change his mind on the policy and become the deciding vote to pass the bill through the Senate while calling it "great for America."
Now, while Biden pivots away from the "inflation reduction" part of the Inflation Reduction Act — making things up as he stumbles along — he's likely not to face any more serious consequences than his policies have already earned him. But for Manchin, well, he's being left hung out to dry and emblazoned with a scarlet acronym — "IRA" — which he's not going to be able to hide should he choose to make a run for reelection in 2024.
