There’s a difference between “putting lipstick on a pig” – and calling the pig Marilyn Monroe. The Democrat’s “Inflation Reduction Act” is actually an “Inflation Acceleration Act.” If anyone doubted whether audacity lives, it does. This is pure gibberish, worst bill since Obamacare.

What does this “kill Peter to bribe Paul” bill do? In the name of buying votes, stoking class warfare, and changing the climate, it brutally damages the US economy, eroding buying power for all Americans with higher corporate taxes and spending – for which there is no money, pushing up inflation. It raises taxes on businesses, syphoning precious dollars from growth.

Four facts say it all.

First, the bill’s contents are not benign, they are objectionable. The bill raises taxes in a recession, opposite of what 230 non-partisan economists recommended. Response: “They’re wrong.”

Understand when new taxes hit big employers struggling with energy costs twice what they were 18 months ago, the effect is to suffocate hiring, trigger layoffs. Labor is the highest cost, followed by capital – beginning with energy. Best way to kill an economy is raise energy costs and taxes, triggering cuts.

Not only does this bill slow growth and accelerate unemployment but think…How you do you survive if you run a business? If you must pay the government more, how? You cut labor, then pass higher taxes to consumers with higher prices. Does that reduce inflation? Raise consumption? Help or hurt?

Does a bill that spends money we do not have on things we do not want, giving away money that gets cheaper from this new overspending – make any sense? Even if the idea is to buy votes, who pays? You.

Does a bill that raises prices, unemployment, consumer fear, business uncertainty, reducing stock and pension values, while suggesting higher taxes pay the bill make sense – especially when it further hurts, and raises prices for, fossil fuels?

Remember, fossil fuels power 60 percent of our power grid – which then powers those clean, convenient electric cars. Hint: Do not believe all you hear from politicians. Electric cars run on electricity, which seems nifty, but it comes from fossil fuels – and milk comes from cows not cartons.

Second point. This pro-inflation bill, marketed as anti-inflation, does substantive damage to the economy in other ways. Because it raises federal spending, cost of living, unemployment and fear, the Federal Reserve will feel compelled to further raise interest rates – to control new inflation.

That will raise the cost of borrowing, slowing home sales, making credit cards and mortgages pricey, and that raises interest on the $30 trillion dollars in federal debt. In just seven years, interest on the federal debt will top a trillion dollars – for which we get absolutely nothing, but core inflation.

Inflation is already 9.1 percent – a stunning 40-year high, driven by three trillion in new spending sine Biden took office. Overspending, higher taxes, expensive energy, high interest prolong recession. Another lie in the bill is that taxes pay for this one-year splurge – no, only in ten years. 

Third, what this bill triggers is prolonged reduction in consumer confidence, a continued drop in real wages, down 5.6 percent in Biden’s term, and a figurative race to the bottom as we get a new version of Jimmy Carter’s “stagflation,” slow growth, high inflation, unemployment and interest rates.

Fourth, all this makes Jimmy Carter shine. Even Carter realized beating inflation meant cutting federal spending – the reverse.  He realized too late, acted too slowly, heard Reagan coming.

In 1978, dogged by inflation, Carter promised to “hold down government spending, reduce the budget deficit, and eliminate government waste,” cut federal programs, hiring, and workforce, open the economy up with less regulation. He could not do it but knew what was missing.

So, what can average Americans do – seeing this reckless disregard for truth, economics, and the public will? How do we stop and reverse this federal folly, fumbling and mumbling by self-satisfied, largely wealthy, out of touch, misguided national leaders?  

Even those who count themselves Democrats need to speak truth here, not buy into hogwash. This is our economy, country, dollar, jobs, and future. Truth matters. The “Inflation Reduction Act” is pure gibberish.  It promotes inflation. All the lipstick in the world does not make this pig into Marilyn Monroe, not make this bad bill good, not beautify this utter nonsense.

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