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When President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law in 2022, Democrats imagined he was setting a new policy feedback loop in motion. Voters would see how the law was changing their communities — investing in new factories and solar farms — and then rally to protect it from Republicans.
That didn’t happen. Last summer, Republicans in Congress repealed many of the law’s best climate policies. So what broke down?
On this episode of Shift Key, Rob is joined by Alexander Gazmarian, a political science professor at the University of Michigan and the co-author of a new paper about why the IRA had limited political returns. Rob and Alex discuss whether voters noticed the climate law, the trade-off between taking credit for policies and de-polarizing them, and why politicians’ credibility matters so much when designing economic policy.
Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap News.
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Here is an excerpt from their conversation:
Robinson Meyer: What’s your interpretation of kind of what was missing from the IRA rollout then?
Alexander Gazmararian: This is actually something people who listen to this podcast will remember from past discussions, but on the tax incentive side, there was not much mobilization on the community level, helping provide information to community members about the role of the Inflation Reduction Act.
Let me give you an example, which actually was part of the reason that I got interested in this study. Back in 2023, I drove out to Weirton, West Virginia, which is the site of a new form energy battery plant. This is an old steel mill town. It’s incredibly symbolic. It’s like, out of the ashes of this steel mill, you have this battery plant rising. And I was interested in going to this town because it’s the sort of prototypical example of IRA investment in a red state.
Two reactions I had from going there, talking to people on the street, talking to local officials: Nobody knew the IRA had a role to play. In fact, I pressed local politicians on, who do you think is responsible for this project? And they laughed and they said, “I think Baby Dog is responsible for this project.” I said, “What isBaby Dog?” And that’s the name of then-Governor Jim Justice’s dog, who he would actually even take around to all these sort of ribbon cutting public engagement ceremonies. The dog had its own little seat. And it’s just sort of demonstrative of, these local and state politicians are very good at claiming credit.
And, you know, I think there is a misconception — it’s not always credit where credit’s not due. In fact, the state government provided its own set of tax incentive policies that helped form energy locate there. You know, these companies are trying to decide where to locate across the entire United States. And there’s a suite of state and local policy incentives along with federal incentives. So this is just to illustrate, local elected officials can’t tie it back to Biden. People on the street aren’t going to tie it back to Biden. It is just unrealistic to expect there to be political returns.
You can find a full transcript of the episode here.
Mentioned:
The new paper: Why Biden-era clean energy investment policies had limited political returns
Rob’s original article about the ‘Green Spiral’
From Heatmap: Does More Renewable Energy Lead to More Political Support? Not in Texas.
From Heatmap: Inside Form Energy’s Big Google Data Center Deal
This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by …
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Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.
