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House Passes Bill Designed To Assist Valley Residents
harder
Congressman Josh Harder

Action recently on Capitol Hill saw House passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, a move applauded by area Congressman Josh Harder. The bill has already passed the Senate and now heads to the President’s desk to be signed into law. Approved Aug. 12 by the House, some of the provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act will help farmers more effectively fight climate change.

“Passing the Inflation Reduction Act means that we can finally be confident in the world we’ll one day hand off to our kids and grandkids,” said Rep. Harder. “This bill will get prices down for today, pay off our national debt for tomorrow, and address the climate crisis and the drought for the next 50 years. It’s about time we did something commonsense in Washington. I’m proud to play a part in making it happen.”

There are six central aspects of the Inflation Reduction Act.

It will lower energy costs by hundreds of dollars per year for families by making clean energy more affordable and accessible; spur an unprecedented expansion in clean energy deployment and manufacturing with more than 950 million solar panels, 120,000 wind turbines, and 2,300 grid-scale battery plants powering homes, businesses, and communities by 2030; and position America to achieve the President’s climate goals through the most significant legislative step forward to cut carbon pollution in history. And, it will create good paying jobs, advance environmental justice at an historic scale, and strengthen American energy security.

It will lower prescription drug costs for millions of Americans by hundreds – or in some cases thousands – of dollars per year, by allowing Medicare to negotiate prices for high-cost drugs, requiring Medicare rebates from drug manufacturers increasing prices faster than inflation, capping annual out-of-pocket prescription drug expenses for Medicare beneficiaries, and capping the cost of insulin for Medicare beneficiaries at no more than $35 a month.

It will save about 13 million Americans an average of about $800 per year on their health care premiums, by continuing the improvements to Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies enacted in the American Rescue Plan (ARP). By making health care more affordable, these improvements have expanded coverage to millions of people, helping bring the uninsured rate to an all-time low. Extending them will build on this progress and help reduce health disparities.

It will make the tax code fairer, raising revenue by cracking down on wealthy millionaires and billionaires and large corporations that evade their obligation to pay tax and on large, profitable corporations that currently get away without paying a dollar in federal income tax and by imposing a 1 percent surcharge on corporate stock buybacks that will encourage businesses to invest. No family making less than $400,000 per year will see their taxes go up.

It will fight inflation by achieving hundreds of billions in deficit reduction—on top of the more than $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction achieved this year and the more than $350 billion achieved last year.

It will provide $4 billion to fight drought conditions, including in California. These funds will be used for direct aid for farmers, assistance in upgrading watering technology, and shoring up critical parts of the West’s water system.