Biden Lets the Truth About the 'Inflation Reduction Act' Slip: 'I Wish I Hadn't Called It That'
Voltaire once quipped that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.
In like manner, President Joe Biden admitted this week that the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act had nothing to do with reducing inflation.
According to Bloomberg, Biden made the admission while speaking at a Thursday fundraiser in Park City, Utah. “I wish I hadn’t called it that,” the president said.
Biden said he regretted the name “because it has less to do with reducing inflation than providing alternatives where we generate economic growth.”
The president’s extemporaneous comments often raise eyebrows.
Associated Press reporter Chris Megerian noted Biden’s characteristic lack of restraint while speaking to donors and listed a series of examples from Thursday’s fundraiser alone, including the Inflation Reduction Act mea culpa.
President Biden can get a little more candid while speaking at fundraisers, and today’s in Park City was no exception.
Here are some example.
— Chris Megerian (@ChrisMegerian) August 10, 2023
Biden’s occasional candor might result in accidental revelations of truth.
On the other hand, throughout his career the president has shown no evidence that he would recognize the truth if he happened to speak it.
The event in Utah was not the only time this week that Biden mentioned the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act. The first time he did so, however, he said it had a very different purpose.
At a fundraiser in New Mexico on Tuesday, Biden admitted that his signature act had nothing to do with inflation. Curiously, though, it also had nothing to do with economic growth.
The Inflation Reduction Act, according to Biden, had to do with climate change.
“We also decided that my — one of my passions since I’ve been in — since the ‘80s was the environment. Well, we’ve put ourselves in a position where we passed the most comprehensive environmental piece of — it’s called the Inflation Reduction Act. It’s within that.
“It has nothing to do with inflation; it has to do with the [inaudible] $4- — $600 — excuse me, $368 billion, the single-largest investment in climate change anywhere in the world — anywh- — no one has ever, ever spent that. And it’s beginning to take hold,” Biden said, according to a White House transcript.
Surely the most underpaid employee in America at the moment has to be the White House transcriptionist.
Biden spoke for 28 minutes at the New Mexico event. The transcript of his comments reveals an aimless mind meandering from one subject to another.
Indeed, the document reflects a remarkable effort to faithfully record all of Biden’s unintelligible utterances. His verbal stumblings, half-formed thoughts, unfinished words, awkward pauses and inexplicable transitions — all come through in the White House’s record of his remarks.
So did the president intend the Inflation Reduction Act to stimulate economic growth? Or did he mean it as an environmental measure? In some respects, it makes no difference.
Perhaps we should attach no meaning to anything Biden says.
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