The U.S. Congressional Budget Office reports that the federal government is borrowing far more this fiscal year than the year before even as inflation continues to rise.
The CBO released its deficit estimate which said the U.S. deficit hit about $1.5 trillion in the first 11 months of this fiscal year.
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Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has effectively rejected nearly $350 million dollars from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) designated for use in Florida, according to Politico.
The IRA, President Joe Biden’s signature climate spending bill, sets aside money for rebates for consumers to buy more efficient appliances that the Biden administration is pushing and to help low-income individuals buy solar panels for their homes, according to Politico. DeSantis and the Florida legislature have effectively refused $3 million set aside for cleaning up pollution, $5 million in federal funds to set up the appliance rebates program and $341 million to actually fund that program.
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Several 2024 Republican presidential candidates would defund the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and repeal President Joe Biden’s signature climate law if elected, they told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Gas prices are rising, power plants are closing and regulations are impacting internal combustion engine vehicles and appliances like water heaters. Along with slashing the EPA and repealing the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), many GOP hopefuls also pledged to withdraw from the United Nations Paris Climate Agreement if they secure the White House in 2024, several candidates told the DCNF.
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U.S.-based solar panel manufacturer First Solar may receive up to $11 billion in subsidies from the government thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), according to The Wall Street Journal.
The company expects to receive up to $710 million in subsidies this year alone, which is an amount equivalent to nearly 90% of its predicted operating profit for this year, according to the WSJ. Philip Shen, managing partner at investment bank Roth Capital Partners, estimates that the IRA may end up giving First Solar up to $11 billion in subsidies over the course of the next decade.
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The IRS on Monday said it is ending its decades-long practice of agency revenue officers making unannounced visits to taxpayers, citing concerns over agent safety and an increase in scammers.
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The Biden administration will spend nearly $1 billion upgrading more than 100 federal buildings with green technology like heat pumps and solar panels, using funds from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
The General Services Administration (GSA) — which manages the U.S. government’s properties — is planning to make 100 federal facilities all-electric and 28 net-zero emissions, on a budget of $975 million, according to The Washington Post. The GSA is hoping that will attract roughly another $925 million in private sector investment, bringing total funding to roughly $1.9 billion, in an effort to revamp 40 million square feet of federal property, which is roughly 20% of all buildings managed by the GSA.
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As regular as the turn of the seasons, each January sees Larry Fink, founder and CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, publish a lengthy letter on the state of the world and its implications for finance and investors. This year, January turned to February, and still no letter. Instead, February saw Tim Buckley, CEO of Vanguard, global number-two asset manager, give a groundbreaking interview explaining Vanguard’s decision late last year to quit the Net Zero Asset Managers (NZAM) initiative, which had been formed ahead of the 2021 Glasgow climate conference to reallocate capital in line with net zero emissions targets.
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President Joe Biden’s call for funding for 87,000 IRS agents to audit Americans has raised questions about whether the new rash of auditing will target poorer Americans or be politically motivated.
The Inflation Reduction Act included $80 billion to beef up IRS efforts, which Biden says will more than pay for itself in new audits.
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JA Solar, a Chinese green energy giant whose chairman is tied to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), has leased a plot of land in Phoenix, Arizona, to construct a $60 million solar panel factory that is poised to benefit from huge green energy tax incentives included in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
Jin Baofang, chairman and CEO of the Bejing-based company, said that he had been a CCP member for 40 years during a 2020 interview with the Chinese state-run newspaper “The Paper.” The JA Solar factory, which could take advantage of the green energy tax credits included in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), will create 600 jobs and use automated assembly lines to manufacture 2 gigawatts’ worth of solar panels annually once it becomes fully operational, according to a Tuesday Arizona Commerce Authority press release.
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President Biden has promised that the $740 billion Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law this August, will “lower the cost of prescription drugs and health care for families” thanks to provisions that allow the Department of Health and Human Services to negotiate the price of some medications directly with pharmaceutical companies.
Critics are decidedly less enthusiastic. They say the IRA’s new drug price provisions are more akin to government price-fixing than negotiation – an unprecedented power grab in health care.
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The average price for a gallon of gas has fallen below what it was one year ago, and the White House is preparing to go on the offense politically as consumers see more money in their pockets ahead of the holidays. The administration argument? Thank President Biden.
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“[A]s an appropriator myself, left to their own devices, the Republicans and Democrats in a bipartisan way on the Appropriations Committee can reach a solution. But sadly we have no choice if they can’t that we would have to have a year-long [continuing resolution].”
Outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has issued an ultimatum to House and Senate negotiators of the year-end omnibus bill that either they “reach a solution” or else the House will “have no choice” but to just pass the same omnibus bill they passed last year via a year-long continuing resolution until Sept. 30, 2023, effectively freezing federal spending.
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When it comes to environmental policy, the only “solutions” coming from liberal politicians activists involve radically restructuring society and centralizing more power in the government — while, of course, handing out billions in tax dollars to politically-favored special interests.
Whether it’s the Paris climate accords, Green New Deal or the recently-passed Inflation Reduction Act, these political schemes to remake the economy often end up enriching the climate industrial complex and empowering unelected, unaccountable bureaucracies.
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August 7 was a big day for the Spendthrift Seven. In just 12 hours, these Senate Democrats — all facing re-election Tuesday — gave the middle finger to middle-class taxpayers, hugged illegal aliens, and high-fived the IRS.
Arizona’s Mark Kelly, Colorado’s Michael Bennet, Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal, Georgia’s Raphael Warnock, Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto, New Hampshire’s Maggie Hassan and Washington’s Patty Murray did these things while the Senate considered President Joe Biden’s deceptively titled, 273-page Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Their votes should appall every American.
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The Biden administration’s decision to recruit nearly 90,000 new IRS auditors could have a chilling effect on small businesses and economic growth, permanently impeding our nation’s ability to recover from its current economic malaise.
As part of the misleadingly titled “Inflation Reduction Act,” President Biden and his allies secured roughly $80 billion in new IRS funding to hire 87,000 auditors. This is bad news for the American economy.
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The Inflation Reduction Act is pumping money for electric vehicle initiatives into Republican-led states with congressional representatives who unanimously opposed it.
The new law will offer a tax credit for the production of battery cells at a rate of $35 per kilowatt hour the battery can store, representing a credit of about 35% the cost for a company to fabricate a cell, according to Axios. A survey of major electric vehicle and battery production investments in the U.S. as of June 2022 reveals that roughly 2 out of every 3 are being built in a state with two Republican senators, according to data from Axios.
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The Democrats’ massive climate spending package, which President Joe Biden signed into law on Tuesday, will give over $40 billion to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), just as the bill allocates almost $80 billion to expand the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
The bill, dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act, includes $369 billion in total climate spending, and will give the EPA more than $40 billion in the current fiscal year to combat climate change, enforce environmental standards and secure “environmental justice,” according to a Congressional Research Service report. The EPA’s enacted budget for 2022’s fiscal year was about $9.5 billion, according to the agency figures, meaning the bill will more than quadruple the EPA’s current annual spending.
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In a major reversal, U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D–WV) struck a deal with Senator Chuck Schumer (D–NY) to enact a major climate, entitlement, and tax bill. This legislation has been praised by President Biden, Al Gore, and other proponents of highly progressive policies.
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Rather than impose higher taxes and more restrictions on domestic production of oil and natural gas, as Senate Democrats voted to do by passing the Inflation Reduction Act, those in the industry proposed 10 actions policy makers can take right now to reduce costs. The industry says its solutions won’t cost taxpayers $740 billion, as the Inflation Reduction Act does, or increase the national debt or inflation, as 230 economists have warned the act will do.
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Harvard University’s request for an endowment tax cut was denied despite frequent lobbying to Senate Democrats for its inclusion in the Inflation Reduction Act.
The Senate passed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 with tax increases on corporations and energy firms but did not include plans to lower the endowment tax, which is tax paid on income from individual donors to colleges, according to the bill. Senior Executive Director of Federal Relations at Harvard University Suzanne Day sent an email in July urging Democratic Senators to eliminate the tax in the upcoming bill.
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The folly of the Biden administration’s recently announced “Inflation Reduction Act” recalls Orwellian slogans such as “Slavery is Freedom.” The plan will throw fuel on the flames of stagflation while accelerating environmental deterioration. The act would raise an estimated $739 billion through tax increases and heightened IRS scrutiny to then invest $306 billion in “deficit reduction” and $369 billion in “energy security and climate change” to “reduce carbon emissions by roughly 40 percent by 2030.” If ever there were a proposal that failed out the gate, this is one.
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