Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is among supporters of the proposed Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, a bill that would raise revenue for spending on various issues, including energy and climate change.
The act would use Fiscal Year 2022 “reconciliation instructions to raise revenue and lower prescription drug costs in order to fund energy, climate and health care provisions as well as reduce the deficit,” according to The Washington Post.
“The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 will make a historic down payment on deficit reduction to fight inflation, invest in domestic energy production and manufacturing and reduce carbon emissions by roughly 40 percent by 2030,” a summary of the bill said. “The bill will also finally allow Medicare to negotiate for prescription drug prices and extend the expanded Affordable Care Act program for three years, through 2025. The new proposal for the FY2022 Budget Reconciliation bill will invest approximately $300 billion in Deficit Reduction and $369 billion in Energy Security and Climate Change programs over the next ten years.”
The act includes proposals “for comprehensive Permitting reform legislation to be passed before the end of the fiscal year,” which would unlock domestic energy and transmission projects to lower consumer costs and meet emissions goals.
“The Inflation Reduction Act will bring down costs on energy, transportation, health care and prescription drugs for Americans across the country. Let's get it done,” Buttigieg tweeted on Twitter.
President Biden said in a White House briefing on the act that “the bill will lower healthcare costs for millions of Americans.”
“It will — and it will be the most important investment — not hyperbole — the most important investment that we’ve ever made in our energy security and developing cost savings and job-creating clean energy solutions for the future. It’s a big deal,” Biden said in the briefing. “It’ll also, for the first time in a long time, begin to restore fairness to the tax code — begin to restore fairness — by making the largest corporatenations [sic] — the largest corporations in America pay their fair share, with any — without any new taxes on people making under $400,000 a year.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) criticized the bill for falling “heaviest on manufacturers in particular,” The Washington Post said.
“Democrats have already crushed American families with historic inflation. Now they want to pile on giant tax hikes that will hammer workers and kill many thousands of American jobs,” McConnell said on Facebook. “First, they killed your family's budget. Now they want to kill your job too.”
