The Democrats named their tax and spending bill the Inflation Reduction Act, but Americans are not buying it.
The law was hastily thrown together after Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) struck a deal with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to vote for a bill that would increase spending by hundreds of billions of dollars and increase taxes by even more. Although both the Congressional Budget Office and the Penn-Wharton Budget Model say the bill will do next to nothing for inflation, Democrats have been bragging that the bill is already working.
Polling from the Economist and YouGov indicates that the American public does not believe the bill will bring down inflation.
Just 12 percent of Americans say the bill will reduce inflation. Forty percent say it will increase inflation. Twenty-three percent say it will do nothing. Twenty-five percent say they are not sure what the effect would be.
The law will actually increase inflationary slightly over the next few years, according to the Penn-Wharton Budget Model. Over the next decade, its effect on inflation would be “statistically indistinguishable from zero,” according to the PWBM.
Just one quarter of Democrats say the law will reduce inflation, with another 33 percent saying it will have no effect on inflation and 11 percent saying it will make inflation worse. Among independents, only seven percent say law will reduce inflation, 21 percent say it will have no effect, and 41 percent say it will increase inflation.
Republicans overwhelmingly believe the law will increase inflation. Seventy-two percent said it would increase inflation. Just two percent say it will decrease inflation. Fourteen percent say it will have no effect.
The poll of 1,500 was taken between August 7 and August 9th.