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Saturday, August 6, 2022

Vote-A-Rama Suggestions: Inflation Reduction Act Edition

The Inflation Reduction Act is getting close to passage, and one of the final steps is what's called a vote-a-rama in the Senate. In short, these are opportunities for Senators to propose amendments to the reconciliation bill. The vote-a-rama imposes few restrictions on what amendments can be proposed, and consequenctly, one of the common uses of these is for the minority party to force uncomfortable votes for the majority party. For example, in this case, the Republicans may push for an amendment to promote fracking or pipeline construction, policies that Democrats oppose yet are popular.

I would propose some actually beneficial amendments. It's likely that Democrats won't like them, but they are all in the interest of good governance and conservative principles. I would encourage Republicans to consider the policies that this bill will be implementing and propose amendments that would seek to measure the success of these programs and modify them if they're unsuccessful. Here are some examples:

IRS Funding

There is much uncertainty (particularly among the left) about how much revenue generation the IRS funding bump will provide. The CBO estimates it will reduce the deficit by $203 billion, the Tax Foundation estimates it will reduce the deficit by $186 Billion.Treasury estimates the savings to be around $400 billion and Larry Summers says "even Treasury['s] estimate is far too conservative" and would be more than double Treasury's estimate. On top of that, Summers says that IRS commissioners estimate the provisions would be double Summers's estimate!

In light of this large range of estimates, it would be quite beneficial to add amendments that will require some reporting on this going forward and possibly even modification of funding if targets aren't hit. For example, if not already reported, IRS should be required to report its audit rates by income range, costs of audits incurred, win/loss ratio, and taxes recovered. These should be reported regularly, perhaps every two years. Surely $124 billion is enough to add a few employees to do this, or alternatively, it would be worth adding $5 million.

Not only that, but the IRA package more than doubles the funding to business services modernization. Presumably, that is to update their technology and make the IRS more efficient and includes better software systems. Not only does this create more opportunities for good-governance and performance-tracking amendments (for example, reports on what systems are being updated, how much time they saved, etc.), but it should make reporting performance to the public easier and cheaper.

Lastly, it is often argued that modernizations like these make staffs more productive and reduce long-term costs. That is reasonable, but I have always argued that investments that save money should also lead to lower long-termfunding. I have no problem investing funds today to save money in the future, but if taxpayers provide an additional $4 billion in funding to IRS specifically to reduce long-term costs, then it should result in more than $4 billion in long-term tax-payer funding.

Climate Provisions

The major selling point for the left of the IRA is its climate provisions. There are many provisions here that would lend themselves to productive, good-governance amendments. Their should be reports as to where the money goes--what industries, what companies, what states--and how that money is used. How much of it goes abroad? What are the effects on carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Some estimate that it will reduce carbon emissions by 40%! I find this highly dubious, but the vote-a-rama presents a wonderful opportunity to evaluate that claim.

Conclusion

To sum up, Republicans should use the vote-a-rama, not just to embarrass Democrats, but to force transparency on the government and push it to perform one of its most important tasks--providing information to the public. The embarrassing amendments may feel good in the moment, but they rarely pass, and I doubt have much impact on voters. Thinking long-term, Republicans can generate talking points they'll be able to use in the future. I encourage them to go through the IRA's provisions again, consider their own criticisms of the provisions, and craft amendments that will test those criticisms and expose the problems that the policies create.