Jared Huffman: House expected to pass Inflation Reduction Act by end of this week
While the cost for some things like housing and food continuing to go up, inflation is leveling out thanks to a decrease in gas prices. North Coast Congressman Jared Huffman says the area’s residents can expect more relief to come their way as soon as the House of Representatives prepares to pass the Inflation Reduction Act.
“There aren’t going to be any changes to the bill and I expect it to pass smoothly out of the House at the end of the week,” Huffman told The Times-Standard.
The Inflation Reduction Act was passed by the Senate over the weekend and includes a host of provisions ranging from tax credits of up to $7,500 for purchasing new or used electric vehicles to investing $64 billion to keep premiums low for another two years for those insured through the Affordable Care Act. The aim of the bill, Huffman said, is to control the costs of goods and services people rely on, like health insurance, prescription drugs and energy.
“All of these are things the bill tackles in a really meaningful way,” Huffman said.
Overall inflation leveled off in July with no month-over-month increase. However, the annual rate of inflation remains at 8.5% and the cost of food increased 10.9% over the past year, reflecting the largest 12-month increase since May 1979. That was offset by a decline in gas prices in July.
This is the best inflation report the country has had in a while considering some costs are coming down, Huffman said, and the Inflation Reduction Act is going to build on that progress.
On the health care front, the bill would give Medicare the ability to negotiate prices with drug companies for the first time in decades. The bill also put a cap on monthly out-of-pocket costs for insulin for those insured through Medicare.
The bill also includes $369 billion in climate and energy investments that are expected to lower energy costs and reduce carbon emissions by roughly 40% by 2030. Among the investments are $1.8 billion for the National Forest System to engage in fuels reduction, $12.5 million in emergency drought relief funds for tribes, and $9 billion for consumer home energy rebate programs to help low-income households, in particular, buy electric appliances like induction stoves and heat pumps.
Lower and middle-income consumers can also get a $4,000 tax credit when they buy used clean vehicles and up to a $7,500 tax credit when they buy a new one, though there are restrictions. In order to qualify for the latter tax credit, the carmaker would need to source an increasing amount of their raw materials domestically.
Huffman said the incentives and policy changes in the power and transportation sectors are intended to accelerate the creation of a clean energy economy, and that nothing of this scale has been done before.
“Some of the energy efficiency programs have specific tribal set-asides,” Huffman said. “This is something that we’ve done in this Congress that didn’t used to be done for all of these big programs going all the way back to the American Rescue Plan and the pandemic response and things like that. We have included dedicated funding streams for tribal communities and we continue to do that in this bill.”
Redwood Coast Energy Authority Executive Director Matthew Marshall said the clean energy incentives in the bill would complement the local incentives that already exist for home electrification and buying electric vehicles.
“There’s quite a bit on the customer side,” Marshall said.
On the utility side, Marshall said the extension of tax credits for large renewable projects is also a boon. The inclusion of energy storage, such as large battery systems, in those tax credits is new and an increasingly important part of the energy system.
“Another new piece of it is that it has provisions for governments and nonprofits that are tax-exempt to get a direct payment for the amount that the tax credits are worth,” Marshall said. “That’s going to make a big difference for public agencies that are doing solar projects or want to install or own and operate these things.”
Overall, Marshall said he expects the bill to make emission-reduction projects at the residential and community scale more affordable.
Caroline Griffith, executive director of the Northcoast Environmental Center, said there are a lot of good things in the bill as far as decarbonizing the transportation system, energy storage and offering incentives to buy electric vehicles.
But Griffith said the benefits of the bill may get canceled out by other provisions that are problematic and allow for the type of resource extraction, such as mining and oil and gas drilling, that can still damage the environment and put vulnerable communities at risk.
“Part of it is opening up oil and gas reserves,” Griffith said. “The idea that this will reduce inflation even though a lot of those take many years to actually bring to market. That kind of cancels out many of the climate solutions.”
Incentives for untested new technologies like carbon capture and storage allow companies to continue polluting, Griffith said, and tax credits for nuclear power plants are an issue because of the toxic waste they generate and the lack of long-term storage solutions for that waste.
“It may be the best that we’ve had so far,” Griffith said, “but it could definitely be better given the crisis that we are in when it comes to the climate.”
Griffith said her biggest concern is that elected officials stop with this piece of legislation if it’s passed when it’s crucial for the president to declare a climate emergency and direct funding to communities that are the most vulnerable.
By: Sonia Waraich
Source: Eureka Times-Standard
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