 This just proves that while all bipartisan bills, almost all bipartisan bills are bad, almost all partisan bills are bad too, particularly ones initiated by the Democrats. So here we've got a bill that was the build back better, was the build back better, build back better, the BBB, which is people are listing other semiconductor companies. Yeah, Texas Inc. makes semiconductors, that's right. I forgot about Texas. Used to be massive in the 1980s. A lot of innovation came out of TI. But the build back better seemed dead. You remember, build back better originally was proposed at $4 trillion? $4 trillion? I mean, the numbers that these people throw around, a billion are here and a billion there, why is nobody throwing a billion at me? I mean, you know how much we could do with a billion? You know how much we could do to change the world? I promise to spend the entire billion on changing the world. We could accelerate, accelerate the takeover of the world by lesor-fake capitalism. By decades, if we had a billion dollars right now. Nobody's giving me a billion though. So, but if you think about what governments does, it's a 10 billion here, 20 billion there, 100 billion there. It's just, the numbers are just staggering, staggering. Anyway, our build back better went from $4 trillion to then $2 trillion to then $1 trillion and then basically, Senator Manchin, the Democrat Senator from West Virginia, basically said, nah, all of these bills are too big, too much spending, I'm not gonna support it. I am against it and shut it down. And just in the last couple of days, Manchin has been dragged into some cave or some office or some smoke-filled room. His fingernails are being extracted, his wrists are being twisted, his hair is being pulled, clips are being placed on, I don't know what, and he has changed his mind. Now, he hasn't changed his mind to the extent that he is now supporting the $4 trillion, $2 trillion or $1 trillion bills. It's only to the extent now that he is willing to do something. Exactly how big this bill will be is hard to tell. It involves a number of different components. Let's see, I have a little at a chart here with the different components of it. Where is that chart? Yeah, it has a healthcare component. They're gonna reduce drug costs. You should be really happy to reduce drug costs. They're also gonna increase tax collection. And they have a new tax, a new copper tax. And then that's two sections, healthcare and taxes. Then they have a whole section on climate and energy. And then they've got money spent, a significant amount of money. This is the one that really scares me of all of these bills. The thing that scares me the most is the money allocated in the inflation reduction bill to growing the IRS. They're gonna grow the IRS. They're gonna dramatically spend more on tax collection because they believe, they believe that you guys are not paying everything that you owe. And you're cheating. And as a consequence, they think that if they increase enforcement that they can generate more revenue for the government. So they dramatically increase the number of, I don't wanna insult the IRS because I don't want them to come after me. And even though I haven't done anything wrong, I don't want them to come after me. So I'll just say that these people are nuts if they think that throwing money at the IRS is gonna actually increase revenue. Doesn't work that way. But they've got 300 billion of deficit reduction. And the climate change is not just climate change. It's a bunch of other stuff. So let's go over this bill a little bit. Let's try to see what they are doing. There we go, all right. So there is a health care section. The health care section basically has, they're gonna repeal, repeal a drug rebate rule. Well, I guess the government rebates a certain amount of drugs. That'll, they say, right? These are all government estimates, very accurate. Accountants of the government are super accurate. They never missed by a factor of 10 or 100. Never, ever in your dreams. So we've got a repeal of the drug rebate. We've got savings from an inflation cap on drug prices. So you won't be able to increase your drug prices. You private, greedy, capitalist drug manufacturer. We're gonna limit your increases. And then, and then we are gonna have Medicare, which is the largest drug buyer in the United States, maybe in the world, I don't know, negotiate prices. So they negotiate, they're gonna be able to push the drug manufacturers cheaper and cheaper and cheaper because you gotta fulfill Medicare. You gotta play by Medicare's rules. So they're gonna squeeze every ounce of profit they can out of the drug companies. They're gonna make drugs go through the roof, the price of drugs, through the roof that are sold to us through private insurance. Those prices are gonna get, because they have to compensate for all the losses that are gonna be generated from Medicare. They're gonna have to compensate for the losses from, I mean, it's unbelievable to me. I have to calm down a second. It truly is unbelievable to me. Here you have an industry, and I know the drug industry is not exactly popular among conservatives and libertarians. Luckily, I'm not a conservative or libertarians. I don't care. But here you have an industry that is working to develop life-saving drugs. You have an industry that is involved in massive innovations. And if it doesn't do the innovations themselves, they provide the capital for biotech companies that they buy to do the innovations. But this is an industry that has the potential and is likely to save billions of lives. Certainly millions, hundreds of millions. This is one of the most virtuous industries there is. And it's an industry who plows their profits into research and development. If you look at the profitability of big pharma, it's not that profitable. It's as profitable as any other industry. And the reason, and it takes its profits and it plows them into research and development. So second to the US government, the largest sector that invests in research and development is, actually it's not second to, I think it's larger than the US government, is the pharmaceutical industry. So we're gonna save costs. We're gonna save costs so that minutia and these other guys can have all kinds of goodies. So the way to save costs is we're going to restrain the profitability of drug companies. We're gonna limit how much money they can make. We're gonna squeeze them for every last dime. And the fact that that's gonna reduce research and development into the future, that's a future who can predict. And the fact that that is going to reduce drug development, innovation, progress, life-saving drugs. Eh, who cares? The main thing is minutia is saying to himself, the main thing is we lowered healthcare costs at the expense of human life, at the expense of future innovation. It's just disgusting. The IRS is expecting to increase tax selection by $204 billion because of this bill, because it's getting, I don't know, $80 billion to invest, and it's getting to $80-204 billion in outcome. Does anybody actually believe these numbers? I don't. Then there's a 15% corporate minimum tax. Again, they're assuming that they're gonna get a huge amount of money from this. They don't understand from where or how, given that $315 billion. Given the corporate taxes, they already exist, who is the extra that they're gonna tax here? Of course, if you tax corporations, that means they have less to pay out as dividends. That means there's less capital gains, so there's less taxed over there. The corporate tax is the dumbest tax of all. All this new 15% corporate minimum tax is gonna do is increase prices and lower wages. Increase prices and lower wages. That's what increasing the corporate tax is, always. It's actually not prices, it's prices, but it's also wages. What else are they gonna do? We said $300 billion of deficit reduction, so they're gonna take money from one pocket and put it into another pocket. And all of this, for what? To spend on climate change. So let's look more closely at what they're gonna do for climate change. Let me just see how I can, what is this? Oh, first of all, just to close out on healthcare. They can extend the subsidies on Obamacare. You know, subsidies that go to pay for the insurance that whose prices went up because of Obamacare. So now you need a subsidy in order to actually afford it. The subsidy was supposed to be sunset because you're supposed to not need it because Obamacare was supposed to keep insurance prices low. It was gonna lower insurance prices, so everybody could afford it, but it's done the opposite, so now we need to extend the subsidies. Guess what? You know, this is, you know, yes, I mean, this is just, the absurdities, right? They couldn't project it right when Obamacare passed. Why would any projection they give you now? Any projection for cost savings, for deficit reduction, for any of these things? Why would it even register as data? It's made up numbers. It's sticking, you know, your finger into the wind and saying, oh, 300, let's make it 300. I think we can reduce the deficit by 300. And how much will the IOS raise if we give them X amount of money? Oh, I don't know. How about 215 billion? Let's just do that. It's complete bullshit numbers. There is zero economics behind this. You know, the first time government estimated, I think it was 1968, they estimated the cost of Medicare, 10 years in the future. By what fact did you think they got it wrong? So let's say they said it would be 100. What do you think it was? Fact of two, was it 200? Did it cost 200 instead of 100? Did it cost 10X? Did it cost 1,000 instead of 100? What do you think? What was your estimate of how, how they underestimating the true cost of Medicare in 1968 when it passed? The same congressional budget office, same kind of economist, the same finger up in the air figuring out by what factor did they miss? So 100 turned into 1,000? No, they missed by a factor of 100. So 100 turned into 10,000. So every $100 they predicted Medicare would cost, it actually cost 10,000. Why does anybody believe any number of these guys ever produce? All right, they're also gonna redesign Medicare Part D. Doesn't sound good, but then I don't know the Medicare Part Ds are really good. All right, let's look at the crux of this, the climate change initiatives. All right, we're gonna get new clean manufacturing tax credits. Yay. We're gonna get clean electricity grants and loans. Some of it, by the way, to utilities that have nuclear power plants to keep them going. So at least they recognize that nuclear is clean, but most of it to the usual suspects, more solar, more wind, more nonsense. A new clean energy technology accelerator. How much money is that? How much, ooh, how cool is this? 30 billion, 30 billion to new clean energy technology accelerator. There is no end to how much our politicians really wanna be venture capitalists and they wanna get into financing technology because you know, Silicon Valley and tech companies and venture capitalists have just done such a lousy job at it. We need the government to step in and save us all from just the horror of privately funding technology. So we need a new energy technology accelerator. I wonder how they're gonna decide who to fund and who not. I wonder how much of that 30 billion will go to nuclear or fusion or how much of it will go to politicians, pet favorites in New York because Schumer is key. So this is gonna go for funds for clean agriculture. I guess that's more ethanol subsidies. I guess that's just farm subsidies. I mean, politicians love farm subsidies. There are a lot of voters in the Midwest. They love farm subsidies. And then funds, again, not enough electric vehicle manufacturing, Ford is not investing enough, GM is not investing enough, Tesla is not investing enough. Hyundai and Kia and Toyota are not investing enough. So the government is gonna put a fund of $20 billion to play winners and losers on the EV and the EV market. Now, one of the things they had to do for Mnuchin is part of this bill is the freeing up of drilling. So the freeing of the government land in Alaska. So he's getting a little bit there. He's getting money that is ultimately gonna benefit coal. Some of this, I think some of this clean electricity grants and loans is somehow gonna fund and gonna help the coal industry. And indeed, one of the big coal companies was a strong lobbyist for this bill. Because in spite of the fact that a lot of money is going to cellular, it's sorry, to solar and wind, a bunch of it is going to subsidize coal. And of course, the greens are gonna look the other way because okay, so we'll give Mnuchin a little bit of coal. We get those solar panels, how cool is that? So there's, let's see, some of the things in this, there's a methane fee, there's gonna be now a fee for producing methane. It's gonna go up, right now there's a, you have to pay a fee to produce methane. And it's gonna go up beyond 750 per metric ton to 900 and then 1500 by 2026. Methane is this, you know, it's a really bad in quotes gas that contributes supposedly to climate change. We're gonna get significant increases in drilling and public lands, we're promised. The other, the royalty rate it looks like is gonna go up, although it's gonna be capped. We're gonna have some new leases on offshore. So there's quite a bit of new drilling here. So this is what Mnuchin pressed, is that oil and gas get its big. A lot of offshore wind, we're gonna get offshore wind, they're gonna overturn Trump's 10-year moratorium on offshore wind leases. They're gonna build a ton of offshore winds in Puerto Rico, I guess, huh? All right, Puerto Rico, we're gonna get some offshore windmills. Guam, American Samar, and US Virgin Islands, but also, I guess, off the coasts. Oh, there's gonna be $60 billion, $60,000,000,000,000,000 for environmental justice, hmm, environmental justice. You know, because the environment is very unjust. So, God, what a concept environmental justice is something you can only apply to human beings. You can't have environmental justice. So $3 million, sorry, million, I'm so 1980s. $3 billion block grants for frontline communities, frontline communities. I don't know, communities that have bad weather, communities that have built themselves on flood zones, communities maybe close to, I don't know, close to hurricane zones, I don't know. $3 billion for port air pollution reduction grants, so the ports are gonna get money to reduce air pollution. A billion dollars is gonna go to clean heavy-duty vehicles, such as school buses and garbage trucks. Garbage trucks are gonna get clean. How cool is that? And by the way, the US Postal Service, one of the most inefficient, unproductive entities on the planet, is gonna get $3 billion to changing its fleet of vehicles to zero emissions. 27 billion greenhouse gas reduction fund, which will be basically a federal green bank. And dole out $8 billion for projects in low-income and disadvantaged communities. So that's environmental justice for you. Black lung funding, there's no number here for that, but that's to help up, again, the coal industry. It's the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund that is set up to pay for liability that coal companies had towards some of the employees. So there's a tax that funds these benefits and expired last year. And anyway, we're gonna be electrifying homes. I thought homes in the United States were already electrified, huh? Well, they're gonna give them $9 billion in rebates, rebates. I guess if they go, I don't know, solar or something, we're gonna, oh, we're gonna, $500 million to deploy the Defense Production Act to help build out domestic manufacturing of heat pumps, because we don't have enough heat pumps in America, it turns out. Capitalism did not produce enough heat pumps, so we need the defense, and you can go on and on. Oh, we're gonna plant a lot of trees. And by the way, we're gonna spend billions of dollars on drought and drinking water and an endangered species. But we're not gonna build any desalination plans. Can't do that. Can't do that. Anyway, you can see this is just an absurd, ridiculous, just like the CHIP Act. And by the way, Congress is healing itself as this incredibly productive Congress. They gave us the bailout bill when Biden was first elected that got us 9.2% inflation, among many other things. It's not giving us these two bills. They're gonna increase central planning, increase government intervention and economy, subsidize, I was gonna say subsidize all the wrong things, but you never subsidize the right things, there's no such thing. Just a series of disasters that are just gonna cripple this country just a little bit more, just gonna make us a little weaker, just gonna make the US economy a little slower, horrible. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran Book Show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening, you get value from watching, show your appreciation. 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