Gems in the Inflation Reduction Act

 Thus Manchin-Schumer bill has lots of good things in it.

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that the bill would put about $385 billion into combating climate change and bolstering U.S. energy production through changes that would encourage nearly the whole economy to cut carbon emissions. With the planet rapidly warming, Schumer and Manchin say the bill would reduce carbon emissions by roughly 40 percent by 2030, close to President Biden’s goal of cutting U.S. emissions by at least 50 to 52 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. Manchin also emphasized that it would spur American energy independence more broadly, including by encouraging natural gas, as the war in Ukraine has exposed domestic reliance on petrostates’ fossil fuel production.

The bill uses two main levers: major new incentives for private industry to produce far more renewable energy, and other incentives for households to transform their energy use and consumption. Democrats say this second set of incentives will also offer immediate consumer relief for the higher energy prices that have bedeviled the Biden administration.

The agreement would also raise roughly $470 billion through new tax provisions, the budget group estimates — the biggest of which will fall on the country’s large corporations.

But it would still raise taxes significantly, and it would give the badly underfunded Internal Revenue Service its biggest budget increase in its history.

“This would certainly be the biggest corporate tax increase in decades,” said Steve Wamhoff, a tax expert at Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning think tank. “We’ve had decades of tax policy benefiting the rich, but this is really the first attempt to raise revenue in a progressive way that would begin to combat wealth and income inequality.”

On health care, Democrats campaigned in 2020 on major changes, and this deal fulfills two major pledges: Allowing Medicare to negotiate the price of prescription drugs, and making health care more affordable for millions of Americans

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