With Donald Trump’s inauguration fast approaching, President Joe Biden’s White House has rushed to ensure his flagship policies aren’t immediately undone in the new administration.
A memo circulated by a senior White House official urged Trump against repealing laws that Republicans have vowed to target when the incoming president takes office. And it warns of the public outcry that would follow if key achievements like the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act are axed.
“Repealing President Biden’s signature laws would be an historic redistribution of wealth from working Americans to Big Pharma and China,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates wrote in the subject line of a memo, NBC News reported.
The memo notably pointed out the economic and political consequences that undoing key Biden-era laws would cause, “most notably the clean energy and health care provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act.”
“Depriving the American people of these benefits would be a gut-punch to our economic growth,” according to the memo first obtained by NBC News, and “would provoke a tidal wave of opposition from the American people.”
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Republicans secured a 53-seat Senate majority and won a narrow majority in the House with 220-215 in last month’s election, the report noted. The memo also listed the benefits included under the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean energy funding that Republican House districts took advantage of, and helped spark “America’s long-sought-manufacturing resurgence.”
“That includes the creation of over 330,000 clean energy jobs — disproportionately in House districts represented by Republicans. Because of the Inflation Reduction Act, we’ve already saved more than 3.4 million Americans $8.4 million on clean energy upgrades to their homes, and more than 300,000 Americans have saved over $2 billion upfront on [electric vehicle] purchases,” Bates wrote in the memo. “We have also capped the price of insulin at $35, Medicare has already negotiated lower costs for 10 major drugs, and more Americans have health insurance than ever before.”
Bates’ memo added that “landmark achievements” like the Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS Act “are so popular with the American people that Republican members of Congress who voted to prevent them are now being caught trying to take credit for their benefits, and even writing formal letters advocating against their repeal.”
