There are so many good things in the Inflation Reduction Act, it may be months before we figure it all out. (I saw shocked people on Twitter whose student loans from the fraudulant ITT Tech Institute were zeroed out today as a result of this law.) Via The New York Times:
The bill, which Democrats named the Inflation Reduction Act, invests $370 billion in spending and tax credits in low-emission forms of energy to fight climate change. It extends federal health-insurance subsidies, allows the government to negotiate prescription drug prices for seniors on Medicare and is expected to reduce the federal budget deficit by about $300 billion over 10 years.
The legislation would increase taxes by about $300 billion, largely by imposing new levies on big corporations. The law includes a new tax on certain corporate stock repurchases and a minimum tax on large firms that use deductions and other methods to reduce their tax bills. It also bolsters funding for the Internal Revenue Service in an effort to crack down on tax evasion and collect potentially hundreds of billions of dollars that are currently owed to the government but not paid by high earners and corporations.
It passed the House and Senate earlier this month entirely along party lines, as Democrats employed a legislative process to bypass a Republican filibuster.
The bill represents America’s largest investment to fight climate change. It is aimed at helping the United States cut greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 40 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. That would put the country within striking distance of Mr. Biden’s goal of cutting emissions at least 50 percent over that time period.
