Joe Wilson, Jeff Duncan vote no on Inflation Reduction Act

Aug. 13—The Inflation Reduction Act passed without any support from Aiken County's Congressional delegation.

U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., was one of 207 Republicans to vote against the bill Friday evening.

The bill calls for investments of $369 billion to combat climate change and $64 billion to extend the expanded Affordable Care Act for three more years. It also calls for a 15% corporate minimum tax, prescription drug pricing reform, more tax enforcement from the Internal Revenue Service and elimination of the carried interest loophole.

Wilson called the bill the "Inflation Expansion Act" in comments made on Twitter Friday evening. He said the bill was passed much to the dismay and detriment of American families.

"We are already living with record inflation & high prices on daily items, now this bill will spend and waste $billions more," Wilson said. "Biden and Democrats [are] out of touch with reality."

U.S. Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., whose district includes Edgefield County and southwestern South Carolina, also voted no Friday evening.

He said the bill was un-American and added the Founding Fathers would be appalled by it.

"Americans cannot afford this legislation or its destructive implications from the doubling of the IRS Army, increasing our reliance on China, raising taxes on Americans and small businesses, instituting socialist price controls on medicine, allocating $740 billion toward green energy subsidies and tax credits, and increasing taxes on energy sources, which could raise fuel costs," Duncan said. "I oppose this legislation that will make our nation's energy and economic crises worse and will continue to fight back against it because of the damage this will do."

He said it does nothing to address inflation and will only exacerbate the pain Americans are feeling financially by increasing government spending to fund the radical left's Green New Deal agenda and continued war on American energy.

"In reality, this legislation should be called the 'Inflation Acceleration Act' because it will drive us deeper into a recession and make matters exponentially worse for Americans dealing with the financial strain of rising costs due to unrestrained government spending," Duncan said in a news release. "This bill is nothing more than a hyper-partisan rush-to-green wish list and socialist spending package at the expense of the American taxpayer."

Duncan said the bill is a centerpiece for Democrats and instead of protecting Americans by hiring school security officers or border control agents, Democrats have decided to double the size of the IRS and hire 87,000 IRS agents to harass hardworking American taxpayers.

Also voting no were U.S. Reps. Nancy Mace, William Timmons, Ralph Norman and Tom Rice, all South Carolina Republicans.

House Majority Whip Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., voted in favor of the bill.

The bill has already been approved by the Senate on a 51-50 party line vote. Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott voted no along with their 48 Republican colleagues.

It will go to President Joe Biden who is expected to sign the bill.