GOP Bill Adds Surprise Tax That Could Cripple Wind and Solar Power | Hacker News Reader

GOP Bill Adds Surprise Tax That Could Cripple Wind and Solar Power

nytimes.com

36 pointsdonohoe10 comments

Again. Undermining US Industries. This time with an excise tax.

> “It would impose a steep penalty on all new wind and solar farms […] unless they follow […] requirements to disentangle their supply chains from China.”

Even the president couldn’t market his presidential campaign without the help of Chinese made products/tchotchkes.

https://youtube.com/shorts/00Cav9Pu0Co?si=-VAajNAcm7da14m1

It's frustrating to see big government Republicans continuously being fiscally irresponsible and meddling in the free market.

First time?

This has been the Republican playbook for my entire adult life (the 21st century). With Trump they no longer have to pretend.

This really is the dumbest bill of all time. Increases the national debt while decreasing government services to reliable Republican voters, to benefit the least popular people in America. It is shockingly unpopular, and the more voters learn about it, the more they dislike it. The lack of opposition by the GOP is going to sink them in the midterms.

The more the lawmakers who passed it learn about it, the more they dislike it! SMH

> It is shockingly unpopular, and the more voters learn about it, the more they dislike it

An example from a KFF tracking poll [1]:

> The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” that was passed by House Republicans and is currently being discussed by the U.S. Senate is viewed unfavorably by a majority of adults (64%), including large majorities of independents and Democrats. Six in ten Republicans have a favorable opinion of the bill, but this support is largely driven by supporters of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, while two-thirds of non-MAGA Republicans view the bill unfavorably. Among both Republicans and MAGA supporters, support drops at least 20 percentage points, with less than half of each group viewing the law favorably after hearing it would increase the country’s uninsured rate and decrease funding for local hospitals.

Here's an article summarizing a whole bunch of polls [2]. It contains some good examples of how when people learn more about the bill support falls, such as

> The Post-Ipsos poll found that 52% of Americans supported work requirements for able-bodied adults to receive Medicaid, while 33% opposed them. But that policy became unpopular when voters were told that the CBO estimates 8 million people would lose health coverage as a result of the bill: 63% said that is unacceptable, while 18% said that’s acceptable. (The latest version of the bill is projected to result in more than 10 million losing their coverage, according to the CBO.)

[1] https://www.kff.org/medicaid/poll-finding/kff-health-trackin...

[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/polls-trump-bill-u...

https://archive.is/NATk7 to bypass the paywall

I find it interesting that in the Trump era, Republicans are enthusaiastically "pro-taxation," reversing a decades long anti-tax trend. From an economic perspective, these are not viable long-term as they are mostly implementing regressive taxes... which destroy demand and cause recession.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/10/us/politics/us-biden-chin... "The tariff rate will go up to 100% on electric vehicles, to 50% on solar cells and to 25% on electrical vehicle batteries" How is this fundamentally different from the Tariffs the Biden Administration announced and enacted in 2024?

I think this will push research investment into decentralized power.

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