How is the Kamala Harris campaign going to play this?
Two years after the passage of the “Inflation Reduction Act” — and with inflation still eating away at American paychecks — President Joe Biden on Thursday admitted one of his administration’s signature laws was sold on a lie.
And it’s a lie that should be plaguing his vice president’s run for the nation’s top job.
In a speech in the battleground state of Wisconsin, Biden touted yet more federal spending — $7.3 billion for “clean” energy programs in rural areas — paid for by a bill that was supposed to be about helping to reduced the cost of living for American families.
It was a moment, as the conservative website Townhall noted in a post on the social media platform X, where the president “just STRAIGHT UP ADMITTED that the Inflation Reduction Act was a TOTAL SCAM that had NOTHING to do with reducing inflation!”
Joe Biden just STRAIGHT UP ADMITTED that the Inflation Reduction Act was a TOTAL SCAM that had NOTHING to do with reducing inflation!
Does Kamala Harris agree with this?
“We should’ve named it what it was!” pic.twitter.com/2WL7N1exN2
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) September 5, 2024
It was, according to Biden, “the most signifant climate change law ever.”
“We should have named it what it was,” he said.
Have Biden’s policies seriously damaged the economy?
The problem Democrats faced then, and face now, is that if they name things for what they are, they won’t be able to convince the American public to go along.
During the Trump administration, Democrats tried to sell a “Green New Deal” that didn’t get anywhere — for good reason. The idea of energy created from wind and solar power might sound great on the surface, in a dewy-eyed, dreamy kind of way. But when it comes to spending massive amounts of money for negligible returns, sane, adult people tend to balk.
But when inflation is ravaging household income, coming up with a bill called the “Inflation Reduction Act” makes it much more appealing.
Biden has made a similar admission before. In 2023, during a speech in Park City, Utah, he acknowledged outright that the bill “has less to do with reducing inflation than providing alternatives where we generate economic growth.”
So, an “Inflation Reduction Act” it wasn’t.
“I wish I hadn’t called it that,” he said.
But Thursday’s admission — “we should have named it what it was” — was far more explicit.
And that should be a problem for the Kamala Harris president campaign. It was Harris, remember, who cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate that passed the monstrosity of a bill in August 2022 and sent it to the then-Democratic controlled House for final approval before Biden got it.
If Biden is admitting its title was a lie, what does that say about Harris?
(It’s true that Biden already has one foot out the door of the White House but he is still, technically, Harris’ boss, being the president of the United States and all.)
And social media users were paying attention:
Guess who the deciding vote was? pic.twitter.com/1H5Ed1ymxI
— JWF (@JammieWF) September 5, 2024
Always lying to the American people. Remember, the tie breaking vote was kamala. Being mentally comprised, he let the truth out.
— Holly (@hollykam) September 5, 2024
Joe Biden just admitted that their so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” was never about reducing inflation.
In fact, it made prices explode across the country.
VP Kamala Harris was the deciding vote for its passage. pic.twitter.com/ZYGOaPThGY
— Senate Republicans (@SenateGOP) September 5, 2024
And then there was this — a suggestion that Biden was deliberately sabotaging the Harris campaign:
He really doesn’t want to her to win. pic.twitter.com/OfQbHNGCKQ
— Purvi Rajani (@PurviRajani) September 5, 2024
“He really doesn’t want her to win,” the X user wrote.
It could well be true that Biden resents being shivved by his own party so much that he’s dropped a bomb on his potential successor’s efforts deliberately — but that would be assuming a good deal of strategic thinking on the part of a guy who probably has trouble putting his pants on in the morning — or remembering he’s supposed to.
It’s much more likely that Biden — clearly venturing off script for the occasion — simply forgot why the deceptive advertising was necessary in the first place, or, considering his lamest-of-lame-ducks status, no longer cares.
What really matters out of the Thursday video — guaranteed to be ignored by the establishment media — is Biden’s open admission of a Democratic lie that hangs firmly around the neck of his vice president. (In a statement released Aug. 16, in fact, Harris said she was “proud” of her tie-breaking role in getting the lie into law.)
The best play by the Harris campaign would be to ignore the Biden debacle, brazen it out and depend on her mainstream media friends to let the whole thing blow over.
But with a presidential debate looming on Tuesday, that could be impossible.
Even if ABC’s moderators don’t bring it up, former President Donald Trump just got handed a beltload of ammunition.
He should be blazing away.
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