Romney Comments on Democrats’ Reconciliation Package

WASHINGTON—U.S. Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) made the following comments about Washington Democrats’ latest reconciliation package—the so-called Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. The video can be found here.

So if you have been paying attention to the news lately, you’ve see that there is a piece of legislation that is going to be done by reconciliation in Washington, called the Inflation Reduction Act. By the way, if you believe it’s going to reduce inflation, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I’ll sell you. This is not about inflation reduction, this is all about Democrats spending on things they want to spend money on. I’m not going to support it. I don’t think any Republicans are going to support it. Why is that? Well, it’s another taxing and spending bill. And specifically, there are a number of things they are going to do that I think are pretty harmful.

One is, they say they are going to raise taxes on corporations by about $300 billion. You might think, “well who cares if corporations pay more?” Well, the answer is, you do. Because corporations pass along to their consumers what happens when their costs go up. And so you can expect that this will result in slightly higher prices for the products that you buy—not something that’s a good idea during a period of high inflation.

And then they are planning on hiring an extra 80,000 IRS auditors and agents. Think about that. They want to get $100 billion from the American taxpayers. They want to do that by having a bunch of auditors come after everyday Americans and see if they can’t find some way to get more money from them.

And then finally, they’re planning on having the government set prices on drugs. Look, I don’t like the government setting prices on anything. And you might think, “well, but drug prices are too high, we are paying too much for our drugs.” But there’s a little wrinkle here, and that is that the prices that are going to be reduced are for the government purchasing of drugs, not the individuals. So, the government will pay less for the drugs that the government buys, but you’re not going to pay less. In fact, the money the government saves on the lower-priced drugs will be used to pay for some of the Green New Deal priorities that are also part of this bill.

So, I’m not going to be voting for this bill that Chuck Schumer has been promoting. I don’t think other Republicans will as well. If you have any chance to make a call to any Democrats you know, you might tell them why it is a bad idea. Take care.