Former President Joe Biden and his Democrat cronies piled a series of green incentive tax cuts into the faux Inflation Reduction Act in 2022.
Now that those government subsidies masquerading as tax cuts have had time to ripen, it is clear that they are far more costly to the federal government’s bottom line than the Congressional Budget Office claimed.
Forbes Magazine published an article by Christine McDaniel in May of 2023 making a strong case that CBO estimates of costs for Wind Production Tax credits drastically underestimated the real costs to the Treasury.
In her analysis, Ms. McDaniel found that the real costs could be as much as four times the estimated $11.2 billion annually, increasing the subsidy to more than $40 billion to wealthy investors like Warren Buffett.
Remember it was Buffett who was quoted by US News in 2013 saying, “I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire’s tax rate.”
Buffet explained, “For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”
While the Wind Production Tax Credit might be great for Warren Buffett’s bottom line, it stinks for the American people.
For example, if Ms. McDaniel’s mid-range estimate of the real cost of the Wind Production Tax Credit of $30 billion a year is accurate, just eliminating that one piece of billionaire pork would offset an estimated twenty percent of the elimination of taxes on tips.
As House and Senate Republicans consider how to pass the big, beautiful budget reconciliation bill, it would be foolish to leave the social engineering green subsidies intact.
While politically difficult in some districts, it will be much easier to explain to Social Security recipients that green subsidies were ended in order to ending double taxation on their earned retirement check, than to explain why you didn’t.
It will also be easier for GOP politicians to explain in high state income tax states, that their constituents were able to write off more of their state and local property and income taxes, because boondoggle green incentives were ended, than to explain why they failed to lessen the federal tax burden.
It is obvious that those who would submarine GDP increasing tax cuts to protect social engineering under the guise of inflation reduction, are not going to vote for any tax cut bill. So, there is no need to cater to them.
Congress should pass the extension of the Trump tax cuts, the ending of federal taxes on overtime pay and tips, as well as the onerous double taxation of Social Security payments now and let the positive economic benefits flow as their economic impact takes hold in late 2025 and throughout 2026, while ending Joe Biden’s green money grab.
And the first step is to get each of the Biden green new deal tax subsidies rescored based upon new, knowable data so they can be used to offset the GOP economic agenda.
It would be both politically and economically wise.
Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government.
Reproduced with permission. Original here: Rescore the Green New Deal (IRA) Tax Cuts to Find Room for Real Cuts
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