John,
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 is set for a Senate vote this weekend and we need your help. This is an important bill for our country and working families. It makes critical investments in U.S manufacturing to help ensure new vehicles and emerging technologies and are built in America for decades to come, lowers the costs of life-saving drugs and health care insurance, tackles climate change in a meaningful way, and reduces the deficit. The Inflation Reduction Act puts the interests of working families and retirees before the ultra-wealthy and Wall Street. It is paid for entirely by giving IRS tools to go after wealthy tax cheats and ending outrageous tax loopholes that have benefitted tax dodging corporations and millionaires for far too long.
Right now, deep-pocketed interest groups such as Big Pharma and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are trying to derail the bill. They are doing it by falsely saying it will raise taxes on manufacturing workers. In fact, recently five former Treasury Secretaries, including Hank Paulson who served under Republican President George W. Bush, signed a statement strongly backing the Inflation Reduction Act. They noted it is “… financed by prudent tax policy that will collect more from top-earners and large corporations. Taxes due or paid will not increase for any family making less than $400,000/year.”
Despite misleading ads that claim to be looking out for the interests of the average worker, these groups are no friends to working families. These same anti-worker groups, politicians and pundits blame workers and the wages they rightly deserve as causing inflation in the first place. Not surprisingly, this claim is also flatly not true and offensive to workers who want dignity on the job and their fair share of the profits they deliver to their employers. The truth is that wages only account for 8% of the price increases.
By scapegoating worker wages, these interest groups avoid scrutiny of the profits reaped during the pandemic. The energy, soft drink, and consumer goods sectors are all examples of sectors in our economy that have consolidated significantly over recent decades and been highly profitable during the pandemic. As gas prices soared, many oil companies had record profits. Pharmaceutical industry has consistently been one of the most profitable sectors and continued to rake in high profits during the pandemic.
This legislation directly addresses some of the causes of inflation, such as the skyrocketing costs of prescription drugs. It is an issue that UAW members, their families, and retirees have faced at the bargaining table and the pharmacy counter for many decades.
The Inflation Reduction Act would lower the costs of prescription drugs by finally allowing Medicare to negotiate prices for Seniors, a policy change we have long called for. The bill also caps out of pocket costs to $2,000 and penalizes powerful drug companies that raise their prices above the inflation rate. This legislation lowers health care premiums for millions through 2025. We firmly believe that access to affordable health care should be a right and not a privilege and the Inflation Reduction Act is an important step in that direction.
For these reasons, the UAW proudly supports the Inflation Reduction Act and asks every member of Congress to vote for it so President Biden can make it the law of the land. Please call your Senators and let them know you support the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
In solidarity,
UAW