In a party-line vote late Sunday afternoon, the U.S. Senate passed the long-debated “Inflation Reduction Act,” which carries a $740 billion price tag.
The chamber was evenly split 50-50 and required Vice President Kamala Harris to cast the tie-breaking vote to send the bill to the House of Representatives for them to review, debate, and vote on.
The proposed legislation, over 700 pages long, covers topics such as medicine prices, business taxes, expanding IRS capabilities, and funding for “green energy” initiatives.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) heralded the bill saying, “Today, after more than a year of hard work, the Senate is making history. I am confident the Inflation Reduction Act will endure as one of the defining legislative feats of the 21st century.”
Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) had stalled efforts to pass the bill but recently reached an agreement with other Senate Democrats, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
Manchin and Schumer explained that the bill would approve billions of taxpayer dollars for “deficit reduction” in addition to “energy security and climate change programs.”
The senators further claimed that these expenditures would be “fully paid for by closing tax loopholes on wealthy individuals and corporations.”
However, the joint congressional committee on taxation suggested in a study on the bill’s effects that taxes would increase by $16.7 billion for people making less than $200,000.
Even for those making less than $10,000 a year, the joint committee estimated a 3.1% increase in taxes for the calendar year 2023.
Furthermore, up to 90% of the increased taxes on businesses will come from smaller institutions that make less than $200,000 a year.
Executive Vice President of the National Taxpayers Union Foundation Joe Hinchman suggested, “The IRS will have to target small and medium businesses because they won’t fight back. … The IRS says, ‘We’re going after the rich,’ but when you’re trying to raise that much money, the rich can only get you so far.”
Additionally, an independent study based on the Penn Wharton Budget Model suggested that the bill would cause an “increase in inflation for the first few years,” as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
Despite these independent analyses, Senate democrats claimed that in the bill, “there are no new taxes on families making $400,000 or less and no new taxes on small businesses.”
President Joe Biden celebrated the passage of the act, saying, “I ran for President promising to make government work for working families again, and that is what the bill does– period.”