Joyce on Partisan Reconciliation Bill: Washington Can’t Tax, Spend Its Way Out of Inflation

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Congressman Dave Joyce (OH-14) issued the following statement on H.R.5376, the so-called Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which he voted against:

“Those who claim this bill will reduce inflation also told the American people that their partisan $1.9 trillion spending bill would ‘rescue’ them,” said Joyce. “One year later, America is suffering from the highest inflation rates in 40 years and we’re in danger of entering a prolonged recession. And yet here we are, voting on a 700-page bill that creates hundreds of billions of dollars in new federal spending and implements hundreds of billions of dollars in tax hikes, all while taking nine years to remove one week’s worth of the inflation that’s crushing Ohio families and businesses.

“I cannot support legislation that makes my constituents’ lives worse while inflation cuts into their paychecks, erodes their household savings, and undermines their future and that of their children,” said Joyce.“Washington can’t spend and tax its way out of this economic crisis.”

According to Moody’s Analytics, whose work is often cited by the Biden Administration, the Inflation Reduction Act would lower the Consumer Price Inflation Index by 0.33% by the fourth quarter of 2031. That’s 1/28 of the inflation Washington’s out-of-control spending has caused in the past 12 months. An analysis conducted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business came to the same assessment, estimating the bill’s impact on inflation “to be statistically indistinguishable from zero.”

Additionally, the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimates the bill will raise taxes on those making as little as $30,000/year. By the JCT’s estimations, families earning $50,000-$75,000 are 33% more likely to have a tax hike than a tax cut while more than 92% of households with incomes under $200,000 will get no benefit or get hit with a tax hike. These tax hike estimates on working families do not include the bill’s taxes on American conventional energy, which disproportionately harm middle- and lower-income households through higher prices at the pump and bigger utility bills.

The bill also provides nearly $80 billion to the IRS – more than six times the agency’s current budget – of which more than half will go specifically to increased enforcement efforts such as audits. According to the IRS, more than half of the agency’s audits in 2021 were directed at taxpayers with incomes less than $75,000. In fact, more than 4 in 10 of last year’s IRS audits targeted recipients of the earned income tax credit, one of the country’s main anti-poverty measures. This unprecedented IRS funding could provide the agency with the ability to hire 87,000 new agents which will lead to about 1.2 million new audits each year. In comparison, there are currently 19,536 agents employed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

That’s not to mention that studies have repeatedly shown that the prescription drug price fixing provisions in this partisan legislation will lead to a 45% decline in biotech innovation and as many as 340 fewer new drug approvals. A study conducted by VitalTransformation found that if the drug price controls in this legislation had been enacted during the last decade, only six of the 110 currently approved therapies would have made it to patients. In oncology alone, the University of Chicago found that price controls in the bill will reduce overall annual cancer R&D spending by about $18.1 billion.

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