When Joe Biden signed the “Inflation Reduction Act” nearly two years ago, it came with a promise and a threat from the White House:
“Today, we celebrate the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which will create jobs, make our tax code fairer, and lower costs for American families,” Biden said on Sept. 13, 2022. “Every single Republican in Congress voted against it.”
Democrats promised lower costs. And they threatened political peril to any who opposed their flagship bill.
Biden wasn’t the only one pushing these messages. “PA families are going to see lower prices for gas, goods, and health care—without a single new tax,” Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey said on Aug. 5.
New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich also lent his voice to the chorus. “As we head into winter, a reminder: the Inflation Reduction Act will help middle-class families by bringing down energy costs,” he said on Nov. 18. “Republicans voted against it.”
And then there’s … whatever this is from Sen. Jon Tester of Montana:
The theme is always the same: the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will lower costs, and they really want you to know that every single Republican voted against it.
Now here we are in 2024, and they’re all awfully quiet.
Make no mistake, every politician who supported the IRA will spin the tale of how their law did bring inflation down from the insane 8.3 percent it stood at in Aug. 2022. But anyone who sets foot in a grocery store knows deep in his bones that the IRA is a lie.
The cost of electricity continues to climb. The cost of gasoline is up more than 54 percent since Joe Biden took office. Higher energy costs lead to more pain at the grocery store, where the cost of food is now over 21 percent higher. Politicians often lie, but wallets rarely do.
Since Joe Biden took office, the average rate of inflation is a whopping 5.6 percent. For perspective, the last time the yearly-average inflation was higher was in 1981, when Biden was a second-term senator. While Biden and the IRA supporters want us to celebrate the current 3.4 inflation rate, they need you to ignore the fact it is higher than President Trump’s worst inflation performance. To put it simply, Joe Biden wants you to re-elect him after delivering an average inflation rate nearly three times higher than under President Trump.
To every single American, the failure of the IRA is clear, and the reason should be as well.
Even before the ink dried on the new law, supporters were working to move the goalposts and re-define success. Instead of reducing inflation, Team Biden tried to rebrand the law as an “aggressive action to confront the climate crisis.” Translation: The bill that was supposed to help your family budget is instead going to double down on Biden’s energy failures.
Nearly two years after the IRA passed, we see it is little more than an historic slush fund that Biden used to help his climate pals. The White House put political operative John Podesta in charge of the billons from the IRA and failing green companies are beating a path to their door for a taxpayer handout. Joe Biden’s friends will get billions while your grocery bills keep draining your bank account.
As we get closer to November, politicians who sang the praises of the IRA will ask many of us for another term. They will show up to the rural areas they ignore in every non-election year and act like old friends. When they do, remind them of what they promised when they passed Biden’s “aggressive action” on climate and remind them you are still paying too much for too little.
We’ve all been paying a high price for the Inflation Reduction Act at gas pumps and grocery stores. It’s time for the bill’s supporters to pay a high price at the ballot box.
Larry Behrens is the Communications Director for Power The Future. He has appeared on Fox News and in ZeroHedge speaking in defense of American energy workers. He is the author of the book “Sabotage: How Joe Biden Surrendered American Energy Independence.”
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.