Column: It’s not too late for fiscal responsibility in Washington

Inflation remained high in August, coming in at 8.3%. Strangely, despite that news, President Biden hosted a celebration of his climate-tax hike bill, misleadingly titled the Inflation Reduction Act, just hours after the latest inflation figures were released. President Biden and Democrats leaned into unprecedented spending and are now taking a victory lap, despite failing to actually tackle Americans number one issue heading into November, inflation.

We shouldn’t be surprised with the result with a little background on how we got here. Senator Joe Manchin and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, in secret negotiations, agreed upon $745 billion in new government spending, with roughly $400 billion going toward Green New Deal initiatives. To claim the bill would reduce the deficit, they packed it with tax increases and offset gimmicks. One frightening proposal in the Act is to give the IRS $80 billion to enable the hiring of 87,000 new IRS employees in order to audit American taxpayers to squeeze every last tax dollar out them.

A key argument proponents of this legislation make is that the Inflation Reduction Act will make the wealthiest corporations finally pay taxes, an overused red herring. Nearly five years ago, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was passed under Republican leadership. This legislation provided income tax cuts while at the same time making concrete corporate tax reforms. Despite the pandemic and the economic recession of 2020, federal tax revenue soared in FY2021 at the fastest rate in 44 years. As for corporations, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, corporate tax receipts jumped 75%, growing $370 billion higher than before the tax cuts.

Right now, we are not on firm fiscal footing as a nation. The federal government pays about $400 billion annually in interest on our national debt. Further entrenching ourselves is unproductive both in the present and future. We must refrain from delinquent spending and prioritize stretching each tax dollar we already spend to the have the greatest impact on society.