Build Back Better2 Inflation Reduction Act: Blah, Blah, Blah
87% of Construction Employees Big Losers!
U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) and President Joe Biden (D) reached an agreement and created a new version of Biden’s so-called “Build Back Better” spending scheme. Some dubbed the spending as Build Back Better2 while Biden-Manchin-Pelosi-Schumer called it the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
However, few if any, seem to believe the IRA will reduce inflation. Even in the U.S. House to pass the Manchin-Biden IRA, they started selling the IRA as the new Green New Deal.
Rep. Anna Eschoo (D-Calif.) said it [IRA] was “a Hallelujah Day” because “taking on the climate crisis is absolutely essential.”
Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) reminisced about attending an anti-global warming conference last year in Glasgow, Scotland. “We told the world that we were back. We’d rejoined the Paris Climate Accord. We were committed to building back better. We were committed to putting science over politics. It felt pretty good. But to be blunt, the world didn’t believe us,” Casten said.
Now, he said, “We’re about to pass the most impactful climate bill ever [the Manchin-Biden IRA]. You all should be proud of that “” you were here to share this moment with us. We’re on the path to reducing CO2 emissions by 40% by 2030. That is a really big deal.”
[House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi [D-CA] said. “How can you vote against protecting future generations from rising sea levels, raging wildfires and crippling droughts?”SOURCE: THE NEW YORK POST (8/12/2022)
The Forbes Advisor called the Inflation Reduction Act another version of the Biden Build Back Better Bill with the largest spending on climate change in U.S. history.
Jobs?
While the Manchin-Biden IRA plan has billons for new construction jobs, it effectively prevents non-union members from participating in these taxpayer-funded inefficient Big Labor Payback jobs.
Sweetheart union deal will undermine Inflation Reduction Act …
While the IRA has many well-documented problems, less-scrutinized language tucked in the partisan reconciliation bill forces private developers either hire union-signatory contractors and unionized construction workers or lose critical tax incentives that help grow America’s clean energy marketplace.
In practice, this policy is a brazen attempt to leverage federal tax policy to boost union membership while penalizing the 87.4% of U.S. construction workers who have chosen to work for a nonunion contractor and not to join a union.[R]ewriting the U.S. tax code to enact pro-labor [union officials] policies, reward special interests and distort the free market’s workforce development and compensation practices on private construction projects is dangerous precedent.SOURCE: BEN BRUBECK, FOXBUSINESS (8/18/2002)
According to the U.S. government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS.gov) data, the most employees are not union members and this Manchin-Biden bills ignores them. BLS reports that in 2021, the percentage of workers represented by a union was 11.6 percent, down by 0.5 percentage point from 2020 but the same as in 2019.