Editor’s Note: The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was badly mistitled, and intentionally so. The Biden administration and Democrats in Congress took advantage of Americans’ desire for a response to high and rising prices for food, fuel, and other basic consumer goods. The people of the United States wanted federal leadership to take step to alleviate inflation. Instead they were lied to and got a bill that led to more inflation, along the way imposing unwanted mandates, limiting or directing peoples’ choices, in part by providing hundreds of billions in spending on President Joe Biden’s all of government approach to fighting climate change. Democrats had been unable to sell the Green New Deal scam to the public, so they repackaged it as Inflation Reduction, and brought it up for a vote. It passed without a single Republican vote.
The law resulted in billions of dollars being wasted on various green boondoggles, including companies given huge infusions of taxpayer dollars in IRA spending, only to still go bankrupt due to poor technology and lack of consumer demand. Billions more taxpayer dollars have been shipped, without accountability or transparency, to environmental startups with no track history, but with strong connections to Biden, Biden administration bureaucrats, and powerful Democratic Congress swamp creatures.
More than a year after the IRA’s passage, when confronted with the fact that the IRA wasn’t doing anything to curb inflation, Biden finally stated out loud at a fundraiser that the IRA, “has nothing to do with inflation; it has to do with … $368 billion, the single-largest investment in climate change anywhere in the world — no one has ever, ever spent that.” The IRA spending itself was, in fact, inflationary, meaning the law had just the opposite of its stated effect. That’s what Republicans and other critics of the law said at the time of its passage, but the mainstream media chose to ignore this fact.
A new study by The Heartland Institute’s Tim Benson, “The High Costs of Climate Scams: Assessing the Green Giveaways in the Inflation Reduction Act,” discusses the Biden administration’s gross understatement of the IRA’s costs. Benson then details the various estimates of its true costs that are billions of dollars higher than the Biden administrations initial estimates. After breaking down the different types of tax credits, subsidies, “loans,” and direct spending, both directed and discretionary, contained in IRA, Benson notes the range of estimates, go from lowball estimate of $570 billion to as high as $1.7 trillion. Indeed, the Congressional Budget Office updated its own estimate and concluded, “the IRA would increase budget deficits by $825 billion from 2025 to 2035, far above the original $270 billion estimate from 2022 to 2031.”
President Donald Trump and his appointees are well aware of the IRA scam, its detrimental interference in consumer choice, its skewing of capital investment, and its undermining of sound energy policy. Trump directed his agencies to look for unspent IRA funds, to block new spending, and claw back what they could. With that charge in hand, Lee Zeldin, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency director, has already identified more than $20 billion dollars held in a private bank to be shipped to Biden/Democrat crony Non-governmental organizations and has directed the bank not to disperse the fund and is working on getting the money returned to the government. But administrative action is not enough. The law was approved, narrowly, by Congress. As a result some of the green spending can only be blocked or clawed back if Congress acts to rescind it.
With this in mind, a coalition of groups, led by our allies, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, sent a letter to the Republican Congress requesting that they stand by their earlier stance on the IRA and get back as much of the money as legally possible. The letter signed by 53 leaders of research institutes and state-based think tanks across the country, including James Taylor, president of The Heartland Institute and Cameron Sholty, executive director of Heartland Impact,
urge[s] all legislators, regardless of party, to make it a priority to get rid of the IRA’s Green New Deal provisions. Many conservative policymakers have made undoing the Green New Deal a priority. This is impossible without undoing the IRA “green” subsidies, which are the heart of the Green New Deal.
The letter is worth reading in its entirety and is presented below as a guest post.
Dear Members of Congress:
In 2022, President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats pushed through one of the most extreme pieces of legislation in recent memory: the so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Not a single Republican in either the House or Senate supported this bill.
The IRA was a reconciliation bill that helped the political left advance its Green New Deal. Now, because Republicans have control of both chambers of Congress, they can now use the reconciliation process and other means to dismantle the “green” subsidies contained in the IRA.
The undersigned organizations strongly urge all legislators, regardless of party, to make it a priority to get rid of the IRA’s Green New Deal provisions. Many conservative policymakers have made undoing the Green New Deal a priority. This is impossible without undoing the IRA “green” subsidies, which are the heart of the Green New Deal.
The spotlight will be on Republicans and more specifically on whether they can come through for the American people by getting rid of these IRA subsidies. If the subsidies are not repealed in reconciliation, this will be a devastating result. It will be characterized as a major failure and an ominous sign for the 119th Congress, as well as a failure to advance President Donald Trump’s Unleashing American Energy agenda. Those characterizations would be fair.
This is a critical moment that will require Republicans and other legislators to overcome far left efforts to maintain the IRA and the Biden administration’s harmful anti-energy legacy. There have been recent reports of some Republicans wavering in their opposition to the IRA subsides. IRA boosters cynically predicted Republicans would change their tune on the IRA once money started flowing into their districts. It appears that may be happening. That is unacceptable and ignores the harm subsidies will cause to Americans, including those living in all congressional districts.
The IRA is filled with numerous subsidies that were designed to shift our country away from reliable electricity generation (coal and natural gas) to unreliable electricity sources (e.g. wind and solar). This comes at a time of concern about the reliability of the nation’s electricity grid, in large part because of misguided corporate welfare policies that undermine reliable baseload generation.
There are also IRA subsidies that work in conjunction with other policies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency’s de facto electric vehicle mandate, to kill off gas-powered vehicles – undermining the freedom of Americans to choose their cars.
These examples capture just some of the problems with the IRA “green” subsidies. In general, the subsidies will drive up prices, diminish grid reliability, compromise mobility, and disproportionately impact the poor. Not to mention, the subsidies are expected to cost over $1 trillion, and this may be a low-ball estimate.
There is another excuse for maintaining IRA subsidies that was predicted after the law’s passage. Some big businesses claim they made decisions relying on those subsidies. Any business that bet on the IRA subsidies continuing, especially given the wide opposition to the IRA, is a poorly led business. Congress needs to put the interests of the American people over the interests of wealthy special interests who are trying to keep their handouts flowing at the expense of taxpayers.
All IRA “green” subsidies should be in the sights of policymakers. They work together as a central plan to achieve a radical and harmful shift in how our country produces and uses electricity, among other things. Given that they work together to achieve this Green New Deal, they should be eliminated together to restore freedom and ensure our country can reliably and affordably meet its energy needs.
Our organizations believe that this is a pivotal moment for our country. Will we go down the path of the Green New Deal, as pushed by Biden and the far left, or will Republicans and common- sense legislators get our country back on course to meeting our energy needs now and in the future? This is what is at stake.
Therefore, our organizations again urge you to eliminate the IRA’s “green” subsidies. We are available to work with you to ensure that when Congress passes reconciliation legislation this year, these harmful subsidies are repealed. If there is such an outcome, then this would be a major victory for conservatives, and more importantly, for the nation.
Sincerely,
Daren Bakst
Director, Center for Energy and
Environment
Competitive Enterprise Institute
James L. Martin
Founder/Chairman
60 Plus Association
Paul Teller
Executive Vice President
Advancing American Freedom
John Droz
Founder and Physicist
Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions
Amy O. Cooke
President, Board Chairman
Always On Energy Research
Saulius “Saul” Anuzis
President
American Association of Senior Citizens
Phil Kerpen
President
American Commitment
Thomas Pyle
President
American Energy Alliance
Hon. Jason Isaac
CEO
American Energy Institute
Myron Ebell
Chairman
American Lands Council
Margaret Byfield
Executive Director
American Stewards of Liberty
Richard Manning
President
Americans for Limited Government
Faith Burns
Energy Policy Fellow
Americans for Prosperity
Rea S. Hederman Jr.
Vice President of Policy
The Buckeye Institute
David T. Stevenson
Director, Center for Energy & Environment
Caesar Rodney Institute
Ryan Ellis
President
Center for a Free Economy
Daniel J. Mitchell
President
Center for Freedom and Prosperity
Jeffrey Mazzella
President
Center for Individual Freedom
John Hinderaker
President
Center of the American Experiment
Craig Rucker
President
Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow
(CFACT)
E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D.
President
Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of
Creation
Kristen A. Ullman
President
Eagle Forum
Craig Richardson
President
Energy & Environment Legal Institute
(E&E Legal)
Malon Wilkus
President
The Foundation Supporting Climate
Science
George Landrith
President
Frontiers of Freedom
Mark Krebs
Principal
Gas Analytics & Advocacy Services LLC
(GAAS)
Larry Hart
President
Hartco Strategies
Cameron Sholty
Executive Director
Heartland Impact
James Taylor
President
The Heartland Institute
Ryan Walker
Executive Vice President
Heritage Action for America
Mario H. Lopez
President
Hispanic Leadership Fund
Gabriella Hoffman
Director, Center for Energy & Conservation
Independent Women’s Voice
Tom Harris, B. Eng., M. Eng. (Mech.)
Executive Director
International Climate Science Coalition
(ICSC)
Annette Olson
Chief Executive Officer
The John K. MacIver Institute for Public
Policy, Inc.
Jon Sanders
Director of the Center for Food, Power, and
Life
John Locke Foundation
Seton Motley
President
Less Government
Charles Moran
President
Log Cabin Republicans
Jason Hayes
Director of Energy and Environmental
Policy
Mackinac Center for Public Policy
Paul Craney
Executive Director
Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance
Brandon Arnold
Executive Vice President
National Taxpayers Union
Daniel C. Turner
Founder and Executive Director
Power the Future
Tim Barton
President
ProFamily Legislative Network by
Wallbuilders
Donna Jackson
Director of Membership Development
Project 21 Black Leadership Network
Paul Gessing
President
Rio Grande Foundation
James E. Enstrom, PhD, MPH
President
Scientific Integrity Institute
David Williams
President
Taxpayers Protection Alliance
Jenny Beth Martin
Honorary Chairman
Tea Party Patriots Action
Greg Sindelar
Chief Executive Officer
Texas Public Policy Foundation
Derrick Max
President and CEO
Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy
Frank Lasee
President
Truth in Energy and Climate
Todd Myers
Vice President for Research
Washington Policy Center
Carol Platt Liebau
President
Yankee Institute
Benjamin Zycher
Senior Fellow
American Enterprise Institute (affiliation for
identification purposes only)
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An impressive signers list.
The Inflation Reduction Act should rescinded ASAP
The Republicans have the votes Get it done.
Get the government out of making energy decisions.
They have the votes, but only so long as the Democrats don’t filibuster the rescission.
The letter is way too long.
… directed the bank not to disperse the fund…
Disperse? Disperse??? What language is being used here?
Want To Buy a “u” …. common mistake.
And a “b”.
Putting the F U in “fund”
Good letter. May not happen depending on recission votes. In the larger scheme of things still just big rounding error waste despite Sunnova and Rivian and Ivanpah failures. Musk’s DOGE is finding a $trillion per year in ‘waste, fraud, and abuse’ despite Dem/court obstruction.
I like to think positively. There is much recent good news after years of bad. The 2020 election was without doubt stolen—six different independent ways to circumstantially show that. IRA misnomer was but one unfortunate result. Lawfare against 45 was another.
But the ‘lost’ four Biden 46 years have had enormous consequences since 47 also had 4 years to plan things out (actions and people) now rapidly unfolding in just 6 weeks:
Don’t forget no more paper straws! Even with all the big ‘wrongs’ this Trump Admin is righting, they still find time to undo even the smallest dumb idea.
Good point. And light bulbs. And shower heads. And dishwashers. And toilets.
And gas water heaters. And EV mandates. And…….
I much prefer LEDs over incandescent.
As is your right. But others shouldn’t be forced to live with your preferences.
Rud, I agree, election was stolen and it turned out to be a good thing. The four year pause allowed Trump to not just hit the ground running, but also to leave behind the baggage from his first term.
Trump 1.0 put a lot of people in positions based on recommendations from others regarding the best candidate for a given job. Trump 2.0 keeps getting accused of appointing people based on their loyalty to him. I don’t see it that way. He’s choosing qualified candidates with the same world view as him. He doesn’t need loyalty, he needs them to execute on their belief system which parallels his.
The next 3 and 1/2 years promise endless entertainment as Trump throws one audacious proposal on the table after the other, gets huge reactions, and we watch as his true intentions slowly come to fruition. Announcing that he was going to clear Gaza of its inhabitants and build a Riviera was a stroke of genius. The Arab world erupted in condemnation and walked straight into his trap. After only a few days Marco Rubio was asked about their reaction and he said (paraphrasing) well, if they have a better idea, we need to hear it. SNAP goes the trap. Entire Arab world embarrassed into silence for days, followed by meetings, followed by a tentative plan from Egypt and Saudi Arabia. They ceased being obstructionists and began taking responsibility instead, and they volunteered to do it.
I’m amazed at how much he is getting done in such a short time, but one term won’t be enough to fix the US and the world long term. Trump 2.0 needs to be followed by Vance 1.0 and 2.0 (or a reasonable facsimile).
Agree. And JD seems to be doing a good job. And there are plenty more behind him. Meanwhile, we still need to DOGE the deep state.
And you must be a total nutter?
Still coming out with the same crazy Putin propaganda and conspiracies?
How about the yankee genius of clearance of native indians in ethnic cleansing of the past
or Armenian genocide or…..Srebrenica?
You are proposing the same fascist white genocidal supremacy crap that was tried in the 1930s and FAILED after IG Farben Zyklon removed millions.
TDS is so sad.
The proposal to clear Gaza was never a serious proposal. It was put out there to force a reaction, which it did.
As to the rest of your rant, that just proves my point.
BTW, the land still belongs to Israel. Israel gave it to the Gazans in exchange for peace. The Gazans still refuse to live in peace (Hamas’ charter still calls for the elimination of Jews, first in the Middle East and then the rest of the world.).
Wow.
I wonder if it is worth my time to explain how badly you missed the point.
o Trump announces something insane
o Arab world goes nuts
o Trump says if you don’t have something better, STFU
o Arabs quietly put together a plan of their own and are now driving the rebuilding of Gaza.
Arabs have been at worst, obstructing peace in Gaza, at best just complainers from the sidelines for decades. Now they are the driving force behind the rebuild which means raising money and getting rid of Hamas.
There is no better outcome in the middle east that Arab countries stepping up with funding and a plan to rid Gaza of Hamas. Had Trump asked nicely, they would have scoffed at them. Instead he manipulated them into it.
Stop screaming Fascists at every opportunity and start watching the outcomes of Trump’s outrageous proposals. Read his book, where he talks about making outrageous proposals to hide his true intentions. Here is a prime example of that.
Oh, please. No one seems to know what a genocide is anymore. There are far more people in North America today with Native American genetic markers (including most people of European descent) than there were in 1500. That would qualify as the most unsuccessful genocide in history. Anyway, Palestinians and Israelis are genetically identical in origin. It’s basically a family feud.
And all followed by DeSantis who will have matured nicely by then.
I don’t see appointing people who are loyal to you, as a detriment. As long as they are qualified and most of them definitely are.
It seems that a lot of Biden’s EOs were signed using the autopen, instead of being signed by Biden himself.
This would make an interesting Supreme Court case. Does being signed by the autopen fulfill the constitutional requirement that a bill be “signed” by the President?
The Constitution also says that unless signed by the president within (I think) 30 days, then the bill is considered vetoed and returned to Congress for an override.
If any bills were signed by the autopen instead of the President, and it’s been more than 30 days, were those bills vetoed and are no longer in effect.
Sticky wicket.
10. Anti-Semitism on campuses being cracked down on.
EO’s are diktats, and the person who issues them is called a _______
Despite the possibility of the EO signer being benevolent and an all around good guy with only the taxpayer’s economic welfare in mind….one should adhere to the long successful constitutional methodologies which were put in place for valid reasons.
When a CEO instructs a department in his company as to what their priorities are, does that make him a dictator.
Per the constitution, the President is the head of the Executive branch, therefore it is his job to direct the Executive branch.
There is nothing unconstitutional about what Trump, or any other president has done. No matter how much you want to believe differently.
There is a possible “nuclear option”. The Attorney General of Missouri, A. Bailey, sent a letter to the Federal Justice Department reporting credible accounts that most of Biden’s signatures were by autopen, and possibly never seen by Joe Biden.
Challenging the actions of the Biden administration for not invoking the 25th Amendment on a clearly senile President, and pretending to act on his part could invalidate much of what was done in the past four years.
But, as shown in 2020, the majority on the Supreme Court is anything but bold, and would run very huffily from such an issue.
TH, the autopen thing, even if true, is just a distraction. Nobody can ever prove Biden did not authorize his autopens.
Although admit am enjoying Biden autopens versus Trump in full view Sharpies.
It seems like there should be a paper/computer trail regarding who could authorize the use of the autopen.
Could someone besides Joe have authorized it?
Australia is well on its way with the transition of its electrical power grid to “renewable energy”.
The effort was spearheaded by the conservative government led by PM Howard. The RET, that Howard introduced in 2000 was then supercharged by progressive K.Rudd in 2007 to dramatically increase the rate of uptake of “renewable energy”.
When K.Rudd came to power. an ounce of gold cost AUD1000. Now with hundreds of billions invested in low cost electricity from “renewable energy/. an ounce of gold is down to AUD4,600.
So a very impressive negative reduction in inflation in the AUD that I suspect USA does not want to emulate.
It is worth noting that the RET will end in 2030 so the current progressive government is using a new investment guarantee model with committed tenders now for 8GWh of lithium batteries, 800MW/11.9GWh of pumped hydro in addition to Snowy 2 and 4GW of new grid scale wind and solar. The average demand go the National Grid is 23GW and already has 13GW of wind and 28GW of solar plus enough coal and gas to keep the whole grid powered when there is no wind or solar. All this gear comes from China and Australia sends iron ore and coal to China in return. China then uses the iron ore and coal to make warships like the ones currently circling Australia.
As someone pointed out, the South China Sea now extends to the Southern Ocean and China is apt to inspect its territorial waters as they please.
Pete Hegseth
@PeteHegseth
John is, of course, correct.
The @DeptofDefense does not do climate change crap.
We do training and warfighting.
https://x.com/PeteHegseth/status/1898813400949408080
Yet another example of how pathetic government is. Government needs to get out of the energy production and transmission business today. They are liars and cheats and they are totally unaccountable for devastation they are causing.