Poison Pill? Why Dems' Inflation Reduction Act May Become GOP Headache Ahead of 2024 Election

US President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law on Tuesday. The law was passed by the House on August 12 in a 220-207 vote. Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, whose vote was crucial for the bill’s passage, admitted that the measure won't tame inflation in the foreseeable future.

"It’s pretty clear that no one on either side of the aisle think the name-switch to 'Inflation Reduction Act' has anything to do with the idea that the legislation is designed to reduce inflation," explained Michael R. Englund, principal director and chief economist for Action Economics.

"I think US politicians are increasingly resigned to the view that neither side is able to change public opinion, so the goal is simply to push through their agendas and raise funds for elections. The title change made Manchin’s vote a smidgeon easier, and maybe that tipped the scales."

The newly signed law levies a 15% minimum tax on large corporations and offers tax credits and discounts on everything from electric cars to solar energy. It also looks to cap out-of-pocket drug costs and reduce the federal deficit by $305 billion over roughly the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). However, despite its name, it does not offer an immediate curb on inflation which still stays at a 40-year high in the US.

When asked by Fox News reporter Hillary Vaughn whether the bill will immediately have an impact on galloping prices, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin responded, "Well, immediately it’s not. We've never [said] anything would happen immediately, like turn the switch on and off."

The bill was passed by the Senate on August 7 in a party-line vote using budget reconciliation, which allowed the Dems to ram the legislation through the upper chamber with a simple majority rather than needing to meet a 60-vote threshold. None of GOP lawmakers voted for the bill and remain highly skeptical about it.

"It does nothing to bring the economy out of stagnation and recession, but rather, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 gives us higher taxes, more spending, higher prices and an army of IRS agents,” said Senator Mike Crapo of Idaho, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, as quoted by National Review.

The media outlet further cites an independent analysis performed by the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School which stated that despite its name, the bill’s impact on inflation is "expected to be statistically indistinguishable from zero."

Furthermore, GOP lawmakers have repeatedly warned that the Biden administration's spending spree may further facilitate already soaring inflation. Meanwhile, the latest $739 billion measure comes after the passage of the Democratic Party's $1.9 trillion spending bill in March 2021 and a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure spending bill in November 2021.

"Raising taxes and spending is doing the exact opposite of how to truly curb price inflation," said Tom Luongo, a financial and political commentator. "All they did was mandate a bunch of price controls (on drugs, for example) which will ultimately create shortages for things with inelastic demand, further exasperating existent cost-push inflation pressures. Price floors and price ceilings create shortages. The net effect will be higher prices. With the government now more openly subsidizing specific sectors of the economy, they will ensure an increase in demand while capping the supply."

Dems Need the Law to Campaign in Midterm Elections

According to the observers, the bill's major purpose is to reinvigorate the Democratic Party's base ahead of the November midterm election and stop Joe Biden's approval rating slide. A Politico-Morning Consult poll released on Wednesday indicated that the US president's approval rating ticked up 3 percentage points after the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. At the same time, the number of registered voters who disapproved of Biden's job performance dropped from 59% to 56%.

"[The law] will give the Democrats something to campaign on," said Luongo. "They can now point to this act and say, 'See! We care about your drug prices but pay no attention to the insane rise in price of food, rent, gas and taxes… or those 87,000 armed IRS agents now being trained to take your couch money'."

However, "the net impact of the bill is that it may modestly boost Democrat turnout in November, and it may modestly boost Democratic fundraising," projected Englund, adding that "this comes at the risk of some modest boost for Republican turnout and fundraising that negates the benefit."

"I’m not sure that, overall, the legislation is impactful enough to ultimately change the likely November electoral outcome," the economist said.

Still, there is more to the Inflation Reduction Act than meets the eye, according to Luongo: the financial commentator believes that "in the long run, this bill is a poison pill."

"[The law] is designed to ensure inflation returns with a vengeance while the GOP is in power so that they can campaign on that in 2024. Honestly, it’s just so tiresome," Luongo concluded.