Just 12 Percent of Americans Believe That the Inflation Reduction Act Will Reduce Inflation

Here’s a fun poll from YouGov on the s0-called Inflation Reduction Act:

56. Do you think that this bill will increase or decrease inflation?

Increase inflation: 36%
Decrease inflation: 12%
Will not change inflation: 23%
Not sure: 29%

Which, as YouGov notes, means that “Americans are three times as likely to think the Inflation Reduction Act will increase inflation as to think it will decrease inflation.”

Among Republicans, the increase-decrease numbers are 69-4, with 13 percent thinking it will have no effect. Among independents, they’re 33-10, with 21 percent thinking it’ll be a wash. Democrats are the only group who say it’ll decrease inflation (21 percent) more than increase inflation (13), but if you add “will not change inflation” to the equation, that becomes 47 percent for increase/not change inflation and just 21 percent for decrease inflation.

This, obviously, is disastrous for the Democrats. It’s also richly deserved. The Inflation Reduction Act has nothing whatsoever to do with reducing inflation — and everybody knows it. Over and over again, President Biden and his party have had the chance to make it clear that they care about the inflation that their last major bill made much worse, and over and over again, they have chosen to focus on the issues that they wished voters cared about instead. Eventually, after a lot of hemming and hawing, they decided that they were going to keep doing what they’d wanted to do all along, but that, to square the circle, they’d slap the word “inflation” on their work in the hope that the electorate is full of morons.

Apparently, it’s not.