Politicians of both parties sometimes take the voters for granted. Right now, Democrats have taken this idea to a new level. They are engaged in an organized campaign to lie to the American people.
The topic of the campaign of lies is the marketing of the so called “Inflation Reduction Act.” Democrats are campaigning on this bill and treating voters as if they are idiots. The bill does nothing to decrease inflation overall and will hammer average Americans and family businesses with a dramatic hike in energy inflation.
It is possible that Democrats realized that the only way they could pass this bill that will result in even more inflation is to call market it as a bill to reduce inflation in the hope that when the new price hikes hit the American people, it will be too late for them to do anything about it.
The bill is loaded with inflation enhancements. The $433 billion in new government spending offset by zero dollars in cuts to existing spending will increase inflation. The tax increases that will be passed onto consumers in the form of higher prices, with many specifically targeted in a way to hike gas prices, will increase inflation. Famed economist Milton Friedman argued that “only government creates inflation” with “too much government spending and government creation of too much money.” Another way to increase inflation is for the government to impose high taxes whereby the prices of products and services gets increased. This bill is the perfect Woke storm of liberal ideas on how to hike gas prices to force Americans to buy electric cars and solar panels.
High energy prices are killing growth and hurting most American families. The Inflation Reduction Act increased energy inflation by instituting a new globalist corporate minimum tax long pushed by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. She has been part of an effort ,with other world leaders, to impose a worldwide 15% corporate minimum tax the elites like to call ‘tax harmonization.’ Secretary Yellen was successful in getting a provision into the Democrats bill that imposed this new tax and puts the United States first at a race to the bottom when it comes to pro-growth policies. As Dan Mitchell of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity argues, “tax harmonization means ever-increasing tax rates,” worldwide and a push for higher taxes on “personal income, dividends, capital gains, and other forms of work, saving, investment, and entrepreneurship.” He points out that poor countries will be punished because they will not be able to copy the United States during our boom times when we had “very small government and no income taxes.” The idea of a global taxation scheme could only be created by elites who have government’s interest in having even more money to spend at heart.
The Democrats did not stop at the globalist minimum tax in their religious fervor to impose their Woke Climate Change solutions on all Americans. A number of trade associations, including the American Petroleum Institute, wrote a letter to Congress on August 11, 2022, where they pointed out that the United States is “facing the most significant global energy crisis since the 1970’s, and U.S. energy security—and that of our strategic allies abroad—is being put to the test. Further, U.S. energy costs have increased 40% over the past twelve months, creating a serious strain on American household incomes.” They point out the insanity of a brand new “$11.7 billion tax on crude oil and petroleum products.” This shows that Democrats oppose energy independence for the American economy. Another dumb provision added by Democrats was to impose a $6.3 billion natural gas tax. This is an additional provision that hikes energy costs for American families and struggling businesses.
Those are the harmful provisions, but there were mistakes of omission, because the Democrats purposefully left out provisions that would have decreased energy inflation. No effort to lift restrictions on the development of energy sources on federal water and lands was in the bill. Congress did nothing to stop the federal government’s slow walk of natural gas permitting. Congress failed to terminate or reduce temporarily the federal gas tax. The states should take care of roads and bridges, not people struggling to fill up their gas tanks. The Woke left owns the Democratic Party when it comes to energy policy and that is bad for American families and the private sector, with the exception of the Woke electric energy producing sector of the economy. They were given a blank check to spend even more money to force Americans into changing behavior.
In short, the American people should be angry at Democrats for lying to them about the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, when it instituted specific policies that were intended to hike the price of gas at the pump on all Americans in the name of Climate Change. The Democrats are so Woke these days that they think they can lie to the American people, while fear mongering about the climate, in a way that will benefit them this fall in the midterm elections.