Biden Says Inflation Reduction Act’s Name ‘Doesn’t Matter a Lot to People’

In a speech during which he did not talk about reducing inflation, President Joe Biden on Friday made the fairly on-the-nose observation that the name “Inflation Reduction Act” doesn’t really matter a lot.

Biden spoke for about 22 minutes at a Volvo plant in Hagerstown, Maryland on the subject of the economy, the IRA, and voting for Democrats — but, again, not about actual inflation reduction, other than saying twice early on that “we need” that.

It was just one sentence after Biden finally got to brass tacks and said “let’s start with inflation” that he changed the subject from inflation to the more general topic of Americans being able to afford to pay their bills, which he emphasized would be easier with various non-inflation Democrat policy objectives on Medicare and prescription drugs, among other measures.

“Let’s start with inflation,” Biden said. “Let me tell you how I think about it: I think about it the way my dad used to talk.”

Biden painted the blue-collar picture of his dad before saying that the way he and and his dad think about “inflation” is “the way most people at home deal with these things. You talk about it around the kitchen table. Do we have enough money to cover all the bills for the month and all the necessities that aren’t regular bills? And if we do that, do we have a little bit of breathing room, my dad used to say. Just a little bit of breathing room after that’s done. Where we don’t have to worry.”

“Well, that’s what we’re trying to do,” he said. “Give families a little bit of breathing room. And that’s what we’ve done.”

Republicans repeatedly said that the bill was not actually aimed at reducing inflation, something even the press eventually began to admit once it was passed. Biden touched on that as he began to list non-inflation-related aspects of the legislation.

“We passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which the name doesn’t matter a lot to people,” he said, launching into a lengthy description of how the IRA affects Medicare and prescription drug costs. He shifted from there into the ways in which Republicans will undo the act’s Medicare changes, as well as “get rid of the corporate minimum tax.”

He spent some time jabbing at Republicans for supposed hypocrisy on “socialism” and then said of the IRA that if Republicans win, “these historic victories we just won for the American people are going to be taken away.”

It was here, near the end of the speech, that Biden came the closest he would get to the topic of actual inflation, when he said that “every kitchen table cost is going to go up” if Democrats lose the midterms.

“I realize costs are going up on food,” he said, but countered himself by adding, “I was able to bring gasoline down,” before finally saying that gas prices are “inching up” again because of Russia and Saudi Arabia.

Still, it’s possible those distinctions don’t matter a lot to people, either. At least not when they realize around the kitchen table they can’t afford those prices.

Watch the clip above, via The Independent on YouTube.