The Democrats' "Inflation Reduction Act" - which according to the Congressional Budget Office will raise taxes on the middle class to the tune of $20 billion - not to mention unleash an army of IRS agents on working class Americans over the next decade, was made possible by Bill Gates and (in smaller part) Larry Summers, who have been known to hang out together.

The bill, of course, was signed yesterday.

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In a Tuesday article that reads more like a newsletter for the Gates fan club, the billionaire Microsoft co-founder recalls how earlier this year, as moderate Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema continued to block the tax-and-spend legislation over concerns that it would raise taxes on the middle class (it will), Gates says he tapped into a relationship with Manchin that he'd been cultivating since at least 2019.

We know, gag us with a spoon.

Apparently Gates and Manchin's bromance began when the billionaire wooed the West Virgina Senator at a 2019 meal in Seattle, in an effort to garner support for clean-energy policy. Manchin at the time was the senior-most Democrat on the energy committee.

"My dialogue with Joe has been going on for quite a while," said Gates.

After Manchin walked (again) on the bill last December over concerns that it would exacerbate the national debt, inflation, the pandemic, and amid geopolitical uncertainty with Russia, Gates jumped into action. A few weeks later, he met with Manchin and his wife, Gayle Conelly Manchin, at a DC restaurant, where they talked about what West Virginia needed. Manchin understandably wanted to preserve jobs at the center of the US coal industry, while Gates suggested that coal plant workers could simply swap over to plants - such as those from Gates' TerraPower.

Manchin apparently wasn't convinced, announcing on Feb. 1 that "Build Back Better" (the Inflation Reduction Act's previous iteration) was "dead."

In an effort to convince him otherwise, Democrats pulled together a cadre of economists and other Manchin influencers - including former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, who convinced Manchin that the bill wouldn't raise taxes on the middle class, or add to the deficit.

Gates also sprang into action again on July 7, when Manchin was spotted at the Sun Valley media conference in Idaho - which Gates also attended.

"We had a talk about what was missing, what needed to be done," Gates said. "And then after that it was a lot of phone calls."

"I don't want to take credit for what went on," says Gates - in the article about how he gets credit for what went on.