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It was so 2022. Passage of the nearly $1 trillion Inflation Reduction Act: a largely Democrat-written, broad spending bill targeting alternative-energy growth and climate-change initiatives, tax-code changes and sweeping health-care upgrades.
The U.S. economy at the time was burdened by the highest inflation since the 1980s and the most palatable way to advance a big spending bill, in a Congress where Democrats barely held an edge, was presumed to be with a name that sounded like economic relief from the surging price and rising interest-rate pinch squeezing consumers and businesses.
Aug. 16 marks exactly one year since President Biden signed the IRA into law. Since then, and especially in recent weeks, he’s been leveraging the bill’s “pro-growth” angle as part of a campaign road tour to push “Bidenomics.”
As good timing or good policy would have it, inflation is trending lower deeper into Biden’s first term, though housing costs and grocery bills still hit many households.
And Biden said Wednesday the law is expected to create 1.5 million more jobs over the next decade, while helping to cut U.S. carbon emissions.
But an anti-inflationary IRA? Maybe in the sense of slashing select medication costs. It’s hard to sell U.S.-made green energy with its potentially higher upfront costs on the way to sustainable economic growth in the same breath as “low inflation.”
Read: Climate winners and losers as the Inflation Reduction Act hits 1-year anniversary
There’s another downside to the name — it provides little juice to spark consumer excitement over a packed list of tax incentives and other spending, such as a select $7,500 rebate meant to get qualifying Americans into electric vehicles. Or to convince them to swap home appliances for electric options that can be gentler on a warming Earth. Here’s the list of tax breaks for the home.
In all, the climate-heavy law provides billions of dollars in tax credits to help consumers give priority to renewable energy and for companies to produce that renewable energy.
Biden has said himself he regrets the name of the IRA, one of his signature legislative achievements.
“I wish I hadn’t called it that, because it has less to do with reducing inflation than providing alternatives where we generate economic growth,” Biden said earlier this month at a fundraiser in Park City, Utah. “And so, we’re now in a situation where if you take a look at what we’re doing in the Inflation Reduction Act, we’re literally reducing the cost of people being able to make their — meet their basic needs.”
Biden has folded IRA callouts into most speeches around the country in recent weeks. He has said the billions of dollars in the law for climate measures is spurring a boom in clean energy projects that that are bringing high-paying jobs back to the U.S. and transitioning the country away from fossil fuels like oil
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that have contributed to global warming.
Many Americans, even those who support Biden, don’t know much about the IRA, according to Reuters opinion polls.
Some 57% disapprove of Biden’s handling of climate change, according to a recently released Washington Post-University of Maryland poll. That poll also found that few adults say they know a good amount or a great deal about the IRA.
Don’t miss: More and more right-leaning Americans worry about climate change, but aren’t ready to give up gas stoves
At a press conference Wednesday to mark the one-year anniversary, reporters pressed White House officials on the bill’s inflation-cutting promise while consumers still pay up at the grocery store, as well as its camouflage of the climate focus.
“I will say that of the stresses on families every day, healthcare costs are one of their paramount concerns. …[M]any have tried and failed, and [Biden] succeeded in getting the Congress for the first time to ensure that we have Medicare drug negotiation,” said Biden’s domestic policy adviser Neera Tanden.
Tanden and John Podesta, Biden’s leading adviser on clean energy, were asked what the IRA might be better named instead. Put in a tough spot by their chief’s dislike of a name that has to stick regardless, they struggled to land on a better one-line answer.
For clean-energy advocates looking to get more Americans on board, the IRA’s learning curve has become part of the job.
“And now the single most important thing, in my opinion, is to just make sure more people know about the IRA,” says Suzanne Leta, head of policy and strategy with solar-panel installer and financing provider SunPower, referencing a SunPower survey of consumers that showed lingering confusion over the IRA and its potential incentives.
“What Americans need is an increase in their baseline level of understanding about the benefits of [solar] technology, and about how many incentives, and financing opportunities, from installers are available to them,” she said.
Ari Matusiak, CEO of Rewiring America, a nonprofit that continues to expand a calculator built to tell renters and homeowners how much energy savings and climate impact they can have by tapping IRA incentives, is undaunted.
“So it’s not so much about the brand of the Inflation Reduction Act. The IRA doesn’t need to become the next Nike,” said Matusiak. “But we do want to connect the rebates to the government so people can track even broadly how this legislation connects to their well being.”
“The way we sort of think about it is the Inflation Reduction Act created an electric bank account for every household in America. But, yes, people need to know that it’s available for them.”
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