Burlison Opens Hearing on the IRA’s Threat to Energy and Medicine

WASHINGTON—Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs Chairman Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) delivered opening remarks at today’s hearing on “Mandates, Meddling, and Mismanagement: The IRA’s Threat to Energy and Medicine.” In his remarks, Subcommittee Chairman Burlison highlighted how the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) increased energy subsidies that cost taxpayers billions, funneled money into the Democrats’ radical energy agenda, and stifled free market competition that would have lowered energy prices. At today’s hearing, the panel will hear from experts on how the IRA failed to curb inflation and created corruption.  

Below are Subcommittee Chairman Burlison’s remarks as prepared for delivery. 

Today we are here to provide critical oversight of the policies and subsidies instituted through the Inflation Reduction Act, or the “IRA.”  

Signed into law under the Biden Administration in 2022, this misleadingly-named legislation passed with zero Republican votes. 

Three years later, the projected costs continue to balloon—with rounding errors in the billions—all while creating runaway subsidies and unnecessary distortions within energy and health care markets. 

In January of this year, the Director of the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the IRA’s energy subsidies would increase U.S. budget deficits by $825 billion over the next ten years. 

That is more than three times the initial ten-year estimate of roughly $270 billion rendered by CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation.  

How did CBO and the JCT get these numbers so wrong? 

Other estimates show an even grimmer picture of the IRA’s long-term economic impacts on the federal budget. 

Recent analysis by the Cato Institute shows that energy subsidies included in the IRA may cost “between $936 billion and $1.97 trillion over the next ten years, and between $2.04 trillion and $4.67 trillion by 2050.” 

These are chilling estimates that extend far beyond what was previously projected. 

I would like to enter this report, entitled “The Budgetary Cost of the Inflation Reduction Act’s Energy Subsidies,” from the CATO institute into the hearing record so that others may review these findings. 

Without objection, so ordered. 

These subsidies didn’t just happen to create distortions in energy markets: they distorted markets by design. 

The IRA funnels money to so-called “clean” energy organizations that would not be able to compete on their own without these subsidies.  

The Biden Administration was blatantly picking winners and losers in the economy. 

The federal government slammed a fist on the economic scale to stifle free market competition that allows for the most reliable, cost-effective sources to compete on an open playing field—all in the name of unproven, hyperbolic, and extreme climate alarmism.  

The kicker? These IRA subsides, coming from the party that purports to be “against the oligarchy” and fighting the billionaires, created tax loopholes that carved out eleven thousand dollars, on average, for the top 1% through tax credits, while failing to demonstrate tax savings of more than $100 for the bottom quintile of American taxpayers.  

The IRA paid out to the rich, all under the guise of climate change.  

There are also implications for the future of our tax code and prescription drug costs. 

The IRA has already led to a more convoluted web of tax subsidies, creating additional burdens for compliance. 

For health care under the IRA, the Biden Administration’s “pill penalty” will ultimately increase drug costs and federal expenditures on Medicare. 

We have an opportunity to take a hard look at these provisions to carefully evaluate whether these tax credits and programs are achieving their intended results, and whether taxpayer dollars would be better spent elsewhere. 

Doing so has the potential to save taxpayers over $1 trillion dollars, ease inflation, stimulate economic growth by allowing for free market competition, and make energy affordable again. 

This Republican majority is committed to protecting taxpayer dollars, instituting necessary health care reforms, and stopping wasteful “Green New Deal” energy policies that are out of touch with the every-day needs of Americans.