What’s In A Name
The president signed the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” this week. You may not have seen any benefit yet…and now, even the bill’s strongest supporters say you won’t for quite a while, if at all.
Nothing in the bill is designed to reduce the cost of groceries, gasoline, clothing…the things that spiked so dramatically and are consistently running higher than the overall inflation rate. Again, supporters now concede all that.
They claim there is help regarding the reduction of prescription drug prices…which, if true, would be fine…but it’s for a limited group of people and there’s no sense of how the process would actually work.
And supporters again claim that the provisions in the new law will take time to be put into place…and even more time for citizens to feel any sense of relief—any sense of reduced inflation.
“But they must have called it that for a reason,” you may say. They did, indeed—but it was all for sales and promotion and not substance. In other words, there is nothing in there on actually reducing inflation…but that’s what the public want, so they can now say a bill with that name was passed.
There’s a real danger for Democrats in all this. Sure, they wanted to take a big swing during an election year, but it’s going to be very logical for voters to look at the November ballot and ask where the inflation reduction is that Democrats promised? Now, by their own admission, folks won’t really see it…but they may see double the number of IRS agents. That’s not a great image for a party in very real danger of losing majority control of both houses of Congress.
So what’s in a name? A lot…and it cuts both ways.
