Tucker Carlson: Inflation Reduction Act may be a classic case of misinformation

People say the federal government seems big, maybe bigger than ever. Well, it actually is the largest employer in the world. The federal government, nothing else comes close—not Google, not Amazon, not the Communist Party of China, nothing. How many people work for the United States government? Let's put it this way. There are more than 100 countries around the world whose total populations (that is, every man, woman and child) are smaller than our federal workforce—entire countries, many of them.  

The U.S. government, in other words, is astoundingly large, world historically big, scale without precedent, truly gargantuan. So, what do all those people who work there do every day? You may be wondering that. Well, it's a good question. Actually, nobody's really sure, including many of the employees themselves. Fundamentally, the federal government is a mystery. Like the universe, it goes on forever. It makes you feel small thinking about it, which is probably the point. 

The good news is, every once in a while, our government does something you can actually understand. That happened recently when Joe Biden signed a $750 billion piece of legislation called the Inflation Reduction Act. What does the Inflation Reduction Act do? Come on, what are you, slow? The answer is right there in the name. The Inflation Reduction Act is an act that reduces inflation. It's an inflation-reducing act and that's welcome news because inflation is indeed a problem. In fact, voters say it's the problem they worry about most.  

So, Congress has decided to reduce it. That's how things work in Washington. You would identify a crisis, and then you pass a law making it illegal. Crisis solved. It's simple. Getting too hot for you in the summer? No problem, just have Congress write a law banning high temperatures. That's effectively our climate change policy and as we know, it works. The science on that has been settled. Don't deny it. Now, Congress has decided to bring that very same approach to inflation. Just command it to go down.  

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You can imagine how terrified inflation will be when it discovers it's being reduced by our all-powerful Congress. "Wait," it'll say in horror, "You passed an Inflation Reduction Act? Okay, fine. I surrender. Gas is now $1.50 a gallon. Hamburgers, two bucks a pound. Sorry for the high prices." That's the promise of this act anyway, but in real life, a lot of people are still wondering, "How is this going to work?" 

Hilary Vaughn from Fox was wondering that, so yesterday she caught up with Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Manchin is the man, the single man whose vote made this bill possible. "Is the Inflation Reduction Act really going to reduce inflation?" she asked. Here's how Joe Manchin responded:

HILLARY VAUGHN: When it comes to inflation, is it misleading to call this the "Inflation Reduction Act" for Americans when it's not going to make their grocery bill cheaper, it's not going to make every day goods cheaper for them? 

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: Why would it? Why would it? Well, immediately, it's not. We've never seen anything happen immediately, like turn the switch on and off.  

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So, as Hillary Vaughn pointed out correctly the law won't immediately make anything cheaper to buy. In other words, it will not reduce inflation, but Joe Manchin didn't deny this. He didn't seem bothered by it. In fact, his response was, "Why would it?" Well, let's see, because you told us it would, you dishonest little creep, and then you printed another $750 billion of fake money, which is exactly the habit that caused historic inflation in the first place, all this fake money printing.

 So, what's the upside of this bill exactly? Joe Manchin didn't say. Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland couldn't explain it either. Watch this.  

REP. JAMIE RASKIN: I know that those who have been blaming President Biden for the inflation going up are now giving President Biden all the credit for inflation going down, so we're moving things in the right direction already.  

REPORTER: And what parts of the bill do you think will quickly work on that specifically?  

RASKIN: Next question. 

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"I'm Jamie Raskin. I'll say anything." 

"What parts of the Inflation Reduction Act will actually reduce inflation?" 

"Next question," says Raskin. He actually said that out loud, as you just saw. In other words, "You've caught me lying and I don't even care. Go away, peasant." So, as it turns out, we hate to break this to you, the Inflation Reduction Act may be a classic example of misinformation. Imagine buying a bottle labeled "shampoo" and finding out the hard way it was actually drain cleaner. It's like that. So, if there's one thing we can learn from the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, it's that in Washington, words no longer have any meaning at all. 

The empire has officially entered its postmodern phase, where there's no connection whatsoever between the sounds that emerge from the mouths of our leaders and observable physical reality. Congress might as well have called this the Eternal Happiness Act. And why not? That's probably the name of the next bill Joe Biden signs and we hope so, because we are long overdue for Washington to ban sadness. They ought to get on that, not that this bill was even thought about by Joe Biden, not that he even noticed this bill. Biden doesn't get too caught up in the meaning of words these days. Biden is definitively post-literate at this point. Here was the scene as he signed his most recent legislative triumph. 

WHITE HOUSE ECONOMIC ADVISER CLAIMS $739 BILLION INFLATION REDUCTION ACT 'MORE THAN PAYS FOR ITSELF' 

PRESIDENT BIDEN: OK. 

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER: It's now law. 

Here we go. They might as well put a sign on his desk saying, "This guy has no idea what he's doing right now" because he didn't and it couldn't have been more obvious. The thousand-yard stare was the giveaway. There were doughboys in Verdun who looked less shell shocked than Biden just did, but the question remained, "What was in the bill?" Well, let's see. You'll be happy to know that this bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, includes $3 billion for the U.S. Postal Service to buy new electric mail trucks.  

So, why would your mailman need an electric mail truck? No one has ever explained that, but your mailman is getting one and China is getting even richer from the electric mail truck batteries, which it makes. So, there's that. Then there's another $3 billion allocated to block grants for something called environmental justice that will be overseen by the EPA, which used to look after the environment, but now it's in the justice business. Environmental justice gets about $60 billion in this legislation, which is great if you're in the environmental justice business, but it leaves the rest of us wondering, "What is environmental justice actually?"  

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Well, according to the bill, it means and we are quoting here, "facilitating engagement of disadvantaged communities in state and federal advisory groups, workshops, rulemaking and other public processes." OK. That sounds confusing, but also expensive. In all, the EPA alone gets more than $40 billion in this bill, including more than $30 billion for so-called disadvantaged communities. What are those? Well, they're not really defined, people who vote for Joe Biden. So, what it really means is the EPA is going to spread more identity politics and race hate. Are you sick of that yet? The Biden White House is not sick of it. They're all in.  

For context, to show you just how all in they are on that, the total annual budget of the EPA currently stands at about $10 billion. So, this is a lot of money flowing to equity and the disadvantaged and of course, everything hangs on definitions. So, who gets to define what disadvantages, a disadvantaged community? Well, that would be the EPA's administrator, a guy called Michael Regan, 

This is a guy who's in his late forties who has never had an actual job in his life, never worked for real business of any kind, but he does have priorities and to give you some sense of what they are, we'll tell you what he told The Daily Show this year and we're quoting, "Everything I do at EPA is through the lens of environmental justice, contracting, procurement, air quality, water quality, land management, starts with 'Are we protecting the least among us, those who have lacked political representation and those who have not been at the table for decades’?" 

So really, this is about spreading race hate as virtually everything they do is. They call it equity. It's not about protecting the environment and if you're wondering how the environment's doing, take a very close look.Is anyone monitoring the chemicals in our water? No. We're busy conducting workshops for billions of dollars with disadvantaged communities. Right. That may not be helping the environment, but it's definitely not reducing inflation.  

Inflation reduction is not the same as protecting people who lack political representation. That's, of course, Joe Biden's base, the 81 million who voted for him. That's what this bill is really about, rewarding his voters. That would include virtually every bureaucrat in Washington. They do very well on this bill, of course, as long as they promise to spend it on equity, however, they want to define that.  

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There's $25 million for the Government Accountability Office to determine, "whether the economic, social and environmental impacts of the funds described in this paragraph are equitable." The bill also calls for $10 million to be spent on "equity commissions" within the Department of Agriculture to combat racism. In other words, to commit racism. Really, not since the German government 80 years ago has any government ever pay closer attention to people's genetics. That's true and yet no one notices it for some reason. Well, we do.  

There's more than $2 billion for the General Services Administration. Something called the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council, that gets $350 million. The Bureau of Indian Affairs gets $220 million. The Office of Native Hawaiian Relations gets $23 million and it's not just bureaucrats who are getting paid. There are billions of dollars in new tax credits. Who do those go to? Joe Biden's donors. Of course, not to you. Are you in private equity? No, you're not, so you don't get anything. Biden described these credits yesterday.  

PRESIDENT BIDEN: The Inflation Reduction Act, invests $369 billion to take the most aggressive action ever, ever, ever, ever, in confronting the climate crisis and strengthening our economic, our energy security. It's going to offer working families thousands of dollars in savings by providing them rebates to buy new and efficient appliances, weatherize their homes, get tax credit for purchasing heat pumps and rooftop solar, electric stoves, ovens, dryers.  

WHITE HOUSE NOT SAYING WHEN THE INFLATION REDUCTION ACT WILL BEGIN TO CUT INFLATION 

So, you watch that and you realize maybe they are going to run him again because he doesn't actually exist. He is merely a conduit through which they change America. He has no idea what he's saying. He reads the script. He seems kind of non-threatening and out of it. That may seem embarrassing to you, a problem to you. You wonder, "What does his wife think of all this? It's so demeaning and degrading. It's cruel to do this to a guy, feed him full of drugs and having read someone else's script," but if you're trying to change the country really fast, this is very useful to you, so of course, they're going to run him again.  

So, again to the bill, a nonprofit called Rewiring America, which supports this bill, decided to figure out how much money Americans are eligible to receive from the Inflation Reduction Act based on zip code, household income, tax filing status. So, according to Rewiring America, a married couple with one child in San Francisco earning the median household income there of $120,000 would be eligible for nearly $12,000 in tax credits, but according to that same group, that same family of three making the median income in Youngstown, Ohio, for example, would be eligible for just $81 in tax credits. Oh, that's weird. So, the middle-class kid shafted while people making 120 grand in San Francisco make out. OK.  

So, most Americans who are making middle-class wages will be eligible for more savings only if they're willing to go out and spend thousands of dollars on things like a new heat pump water heater, an electric stove or a heat pump closed dryer. Right, none of which work very well, but the bigger issue is that all these tax credits for Joe Biden's base are going to increase inflation. This is the same thing that happened to college tuition when the government subsidized it. It got much more expensive. Perfect, and that's already started. As The Washington Examiner has reported, electric vehicle manufacturers are now raising the price of their cars now that the so-called Inflation Reduction Act includes a $770,500 tax credit for electric vehicles, "Ahead of the Inflation Reduction Act, extending the tax credit of up to $7,500 for purchases of new electric and hybrid vehicles, Ford and GM announced price increases at similar rates." You following this?  

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So, the government pays you back your own money to buy a product and then the manufacturer of the product raises the cost of that same product by the same amount. Oh, so it's a subsidy for them, not savings for you. "Last week, Ford announced price hikes between $6,000 and $8,500 for most of its lineup of its F-150 lightning electric vehicles, while General Motors upped its electric Hummer costs by $6,250 last month." 

So, what does that? They don't want to answer the question because the only potentially deflationary aspect of this bill is the tax increase, which is, of course, probably not a good idea when you're in a recession, but our government is not willing to cut spending and stop printing money, so instead their solution is to take money from you. This is classic, right? So, you print all the money you want because you hold the reserve currency and then when inflation goes up, you just try and pull it out of the system through taxation. That's modern monetary theory. Look it up. According to the Congressional Budget Office, this act will cost the middle-class $20 billion a year in new taxes. The Joint Committee on Taxation has concluded that under this bill, 61% of taxpayers make between $40,000 and $50,00 will see a tax increase.  

91% of Americans make between $75,000 and $100,000 will see their taxes go up and 97% of Americans make between $100,000 and $200,000 will see their taxes go up. So, if you're making 100 grand in Arlington, Virginia, are you rich? Oh, no. You're barely scraping by. So, it turns out that Biden was lying. Just yesterday, he told us that no one making under $400,000 a year will see their taxes go up. Watch. 

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BIDEN: And I'm keeping my campaign commitment. No one, let me emphasize, no one earning less than $400,000 a year will pay a penny more in federal taxes. Folks.  

Yeah. Not a penny more. I mean, again, you can't blame the guy. He's just a mannequin, but whoever wrote that knew he was lying. There is one group of Americans who will not pay more under that bill and that's Biden's donors, the richest people in the country. Thanks to the Democratic Party's hedge fund support, and they have a lot of that, the private equity world, the final revision of this bill keeps the carried interest loophole in our tax code. That means that people who work in finance, many parts of finance, are able to report their income as interest and pay half the taxes that you do. No one can defend this policy. It is indefensible. Even the people who benefit from it will not defend it. They're embarrassed of it. They take advantage of it, of course, but it's a scam and everybody knows it and yet it remains in our tax code because they paid off the Democratic senator from Arizona and a bunch of others.  

So, just in case the message wasn't clear, the bill gives the IRS another $80 billion to hire 87,000 new auditors. So, what are those new auditors, those armed auditors of the IRS have to do with a tax code this unfair? Well, the truth is, if you have a tax code this unfair and it keeps getting more unfair every year, you have to hire armed goons to make people obey because they won't otherwise. 87,000 new armed IRS agents. How many is that? Well, for perspective, the IRS currently has about 78,000 total. So, this bill will make the IRS larger than the army of the nation of Italy, also the nation of the Philippines, also the U.K.. What? Thanks, Joe Manchin. 

So, what are those agents going to be doing? We're not sure, but we do have an IRS training video for you. Watch.  

UNDERCOVER AGENT: In addition to being accountants, we're also law enforcement officers, which is very interesting because a lot of the special agents that work for the IRS, they don't come from a law enforcement background. We get to do the same things like all the other law enforcement officers do. Things happen. We have to be able to respond, so we have to be ready.  

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IRS SPECIAL AGENT: So, we teach our agents to fire a firearm, to be able to shoot. We teach them defensive tactics and methods of defending themselves and protecting others as well. So, they go through that entire process so that not only can they analyze records, but they also have that law enforcement component.  

So, in an actual democracy, IRS agents should be taught to be polite, but under Joe Biden, IRS agents are taught "to shoot." How is that not war on the population of the country?