It’s been just over one year since President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, and there are already a lot of wins to celebrate.
Tuesday, the Biden administration announced the first 10 drugs for Medicare drug price negotiations. They treat many conditions common in seniors, including diabetes, heart conditions, strokes, kidney disease, and arthritis, and the plan is that more medications will join the price negotiation list in the coming years—if pharmaceutical industry lawsuits and Republican judges don’t block it. If Medicare does start negotiating drug prices, the government is expected to save $98.5 billion over a decade, with price reductions trickling down to insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs for some individuals.
Medicare would not be moving toward negotiating drug prices if Democrats had not passed the IRA. Not a single Republican voted for the bill. They’re using control of the House to try to repeal parts of it, but a KFF poll found more than 80% support for Medicare negotiating drug prices, a cap on insulin prices, and a limit on out-of-pocket prescription drug costs for people on Medicare. That included strong majority Republican support.
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Drug costs aren’t the only provision of the IRA that benefits Americans. On the anniversary of the law’s signing, CNN reported on a Treasury Department analysis finding that clean energy investments are being made in counties that particularly need economic help. The IRA offered incentives for private investments in clean energy manufacturing, which has led to more than $110 billion in such investments. According to the Treasury Department, more than 90% of the investments announced so far are in counties with below-average weekly wages, more than 80% are in counties with college graduation rates below the national average, and around 65% are in counties with above-average poverty and child poverty rates.
These are places that need the help—and though many of them are deep red, they are getting it thanks to a law passed by Democrats over unified Republican opposition. For instance, CNN reported, Mingo County, West Virginia, is going to be the site of the nation’s largest clean ammonia production facility, which will be built by Adams Fork Energy and CNX Resources. That will bring 2,000 construction jobs to a county with a more than 30% poverty rate and a civilian labor force participation rate of 36.8%, in contrast with a national rate of over 60%.
In other benefits of the IRA, hold times were way down at the Internal Revenue Service this tax season.
We're already seeing Republicans claiming credit for projects made possible by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which most of them opposed. Now that the IRA, which they are actively trying to undo, is having these effects, they’re going to have to decide if they can stomach bragging about jobs that come from clean energy. Make no mistake, though: Democrats did this. They passed a law that’s going to lower Medicare drug costs and create more than 1.5 million jobs in clean energy over the next decade. Republicans didn’t want that. Now we just need to make sure voters know that when they’re deciding between a Democrat and a Republican, the choice is between Medicare drug price negotiation and investment in local economies, or the opposite.
Everyone always talks about redistricting, but what is it like to actually do it? Oregon political consultant Kari Chisholm joins us on this week’s episode of “The Downballot” to discuss his experience as a member of Portland’s new Independent District Commission, a panel of citizens tasked with creating the city’s first-ever map for its city council. Kari explains why Portland wanted to switch from at-large elections to a district-based system, how new multimember districts could boost diversity on the council, and the commission’s surprisingly effective efforts to divide the city into four equal districts while heeding community input.
