While there is no bipartisan clamor to use GOP Senate control to force votes on sanctuary cities, there is a rush to pass a bipartisan bill dumping more money into green energy programs. Some might have thought we were done with the green energy venture socialism after the Obama era of Solyndra scandals, but in Washington, both parties are addicted to corporate welfare. Hence the rush to pass S. 2657, the American Energy Innovation Act.
It’s hard to call this bill bipartisan, given that the lead GOP sponsor is Sen. Lisa Murkowski. Yet even after voting against Kavanaugh and flirting with support for impeachment, she seems to control the Senate floor agenda more than anyone pushing the Trump agenda on immigration.
On Monday, the Senate voted to proceed with debate on her compilation of 50 energy bills. However, instead of focusing on all the ways government, and the federal courts in particular, impede the exploring, production, and transportation of proven and successful forms of energy production in this country, the bill focuses on pumping more money and government preferences into tenuous forms of green energy. Party like it’s 2009?
The bill is full of subsidies and government research for alternative energy and for “carbon capture” investments. While it stops short of creating “climate change” carbon mandates, the entire premise of the bill accepts the universe in which the Left operates; namely, that we need to move away from reliable energy and work on global warming priorities.
Specifically, the 555-page bill would offer parochial research grants and subsidies for wind, solar, geothermal, and hydroelectric power. It also promotes carbon capture to reduce carbon emissions. The bill’s authors say the legislation “encourages smart manufacturing” in the industrial and transportation sectors to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The bill reauthorizes and grows all the Department of Energy programs the president promised to cut when he took office in 2017. The cost is estimated at $579 million, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
We know from past history that mandates and market distortions, responsible for creating junky products at a higher cost, begin with government subsidies and “encouragements” signaling to the market that “green” is the way to go. This bill promotes all sorts of workforce pilot programs for cutting greenhouse emissions and for green energy social engineering of our economy, industries, and labor market. It of course has numerous provisions to tip those programs to “minority outreach” companies.
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