 The U.S. Senate has passed the Inflation Reduction Act, a $740 billion package which is meant to address inflation, climate change and health care. The measure comes after earlier democratic attempts to pass similar provisions fail due to internal differences in republican obstruction. Will this act in its final form be able to address the issues it aims to? What kind of relief will it be able to provide? Eugene Perrier of Breakthrough News explains. Well, I think when we look at the Inflation Reduction Act, we have to look at it in relationship to the problems that it's looking to tackle. And when you look at it like that, it doesn't really look all that great. I mean, in terms of the headline issue, inflation, obviously the headline issue for the country, the Congressional Budget Office did an economic analysis of the bill and found that it will not affect inflation at all in this year, 2022, and that in 2023, it will have some effect, either it will make inflation a tenth of a percent higher or a tenth of a percent lower, but they don't even really know. And so given that inflation is increasing so drastically, basically it will have no impact in 2023. So just right there, the headline portion of the bill, it appears that it will have very little effect on inflation in and of itself. Now in relationship to other things, it may play a role, but in and of itself, it's not the Inflation Reduction Act. I would say the bigger piece of it is the climate change provisions, $370 billion for a range of different climate change provisions, primarily subsidies for clean energy companies and tax breaks and things like that for consumers to buy things from electric cooktops to electric cars. But there are some other elements within it. But to put that in perspective, $370 billion that they're spending, which people are saying is the biggest ever. During the Build Back Better portion of 2021, when Biden was originally pushing this, he was proposing about $550 billion. And what's the difference between that, you know, 200-some odd billion dollars? Well, the difference is between meeting the goals that the U.S. government had set for itself vis-a-vis climate change and not meeting them. The U.S. is saying they want to be at net zero by 2050 and that by 2030, they need to essentially reduce emissions by half of that, by 50 percent. But this bill will only reduce by 40 percent. So ultimately, what you're seeing with the difference between the original proposal by the Biden administration and where we've ended up in Congress is that Congress has appropriated what is, you know, to you and me, the average person, a lot of money, $370 billion. But it's actually not enough to resolve the problems from a bare minimum perspective of what the U.S. has to do for climate change. So we're below the bare minimum of what the U.S. needs to do in a bill that is allegedly supposed to be dealing with climate change, which gives you a sense. And then the other big tranche is healthcare. This is a little bit more of a mixed bag. I mean, it's an extension of the Affordable Care Act subsidies for healthcare, which in and of itself is very good because that means about 7 million people who were able to gain access to health insurance when the Affordable Care Act was expanded this way in 2021 will keep their health insurance. So that absolutely is good. As many as 5 million could have lost it, and the rest would have had to pay significantly more money. So that certainly is good, but it's status quo. There is an element of this, which was the expansion of Medicaid in states that had not yet expanded that would have added 4 million people to the roles. So that's been dropped. So the idea of adding health insurance for anyone has been completely dropped. But at least no one is going to lose health insurance vis-a-vis at least vis-a-vis the government programs based on this bill. The other big piece of this is Medicare, negotiating prescription drug prices. And this is also in a way a mixed bag. I mean, it doesn't start till 2026, the negotiation, and it's only 10 drugs. Now that being said, prescription drugs are so expensive in the United States, that limited proposal will still save the US government hundreds of billions of dollars a year. But this is significantly less than the original proposal from last year by the Democrats and the Biden administration, which would have started right away and would have covered all drugs and would have saved even more hundreds and hundreds of billions, about 700 billion dollars. Now it's 300 some odd billion it's going to be. So you can see it's a significantly watered down proposal. So from the point of view of the United States, it's still certainly a big change because Medicare has never been allowed to negotiate in this way. And this is certainly I'm 36 years old, the first bill I can remember in my lifetime that in any way, shape, or form addressed the issue of high prescription drug prices in a substantive way. But it still ultimately leaves them, very limited. It's only for Medicare, which is a government program for senior citizens for older individuals, and ultimately provisions that would have helped hold down the cost of insulin, particularly, and pretty much all drugs that are covered by private insurance, that was nixed due to procedural realities. So when you put it all together, the Inflation Reduction Act will not actually reduce inflation. It doesn't even accomplish the bare minimum that needs to be accomplished for climate change. And it certainly only does the slightest tweaks here and there to the health care system. So you know, there's certainly a something is better than nothing kind of aspect to it that before this bill passed, we were looking at nothing at all. But I think when you look at the scale of the problems that exist, this bill does not actually meet the challenge that the country needs it to meet in terms of resolving the issues. The law has been passed ahead of October midterm elections. The Democratic Party is worried about setbacks, even as the Republican Party launches further to the right. Will the Inflation Reduction Act help improve the chances of the Democrats? I think it's a little too early to tell what the impact is. I think they certainly could get a boost from this bill because the reality is the Republicans are offering absolutely nothing. I mean, their only position is we're against what the Democrats are for. But something like Medicare negotiating prescription drug prices, even in a limited way, is a very popular sort of thing. And people who tend to be older senior citizens tend to vote more. So perhaps this will be something that will boost the Democrats. Even though the bill itself will not reduce inflation, there are some reasons to believe that inflation could tick down in the next couple of months. And if that were to happen, I think the Democrats very likely would get credit for it because they passed this Inflation Reduction Act, or at least they'd be able to campaign in such a way to where they can try to take credit for it, which I think is true. I think the climate provisions is tough to say because people who care the most about climate change I think know that this is not enough. So I don't know if that will move the needle at all. So I think to the extent that this bill is able to help the Democrats in the midterm elections, it's really going to be in so far as other things outside of it help make the provision of the bill look significantly better in terms of where it is, especially on inflation. But like I said, I think that the Republicans are in a very difficult spot here because they have no real plans at all. And that's because the things that they really want to do will not only not address any of these problems but make some of them, including inflation, actually worse. And so in that context, it may put some of the Republican candidates, especially in the Senate, a little bit behind the eight ball, because when they're in these different debates and being confronted by these Democratic candidates on this issue, it'll be like, well, hey, what did you do to address any of these issues? They won't be able to say anything. At least the Democrats will have something there. So in the sort of balance of power of both parties being so inadequate in terms of addressing people's needs, the very fact that the Democrats are at least genuflecting towards meeting people's needs could certainly help them in the midterms.