Yesterday we looked at Joe Biden’s plan to make his first priority upon taking office the passage of legislation providing amnesty to a massive number of illegal aliens. Almost immediately thereafter, Uncle Joe’s team rolled out another of the major issues that will be at the top of his to-do list. Despite what you might think a new president might be most concerned about in the midst of the 2020 Parade of Plagues, the former veep wants to channel vast amounts of taxpayer money into renewable energy sources that are propped up by taxpayer funds. Somewhere out there right about now, Greta Thunberg must be smiling in approval. (Bloomberg)
Joe Biden on Tuesday will call for setting a 100% clean-electricity standard by 2035 and investing $2 trillion over four years on clean energy, two people familiar with his plan said Monday.
The Democratic nominee’s new commitments mark a clear shift toward progressives’ priorities in combating climate change and cutting the use of fossil fuels. The people briefed on his plan spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Biden’s blueprint also calls for the creation of a climate conservation corps modeled after the work relief program President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created during the Great Depression, according to another person briefed on the initiative.
Even without any details to delve into, you have to wonder what Biden’s advisers are thinking. So he wants to create a “Climate Conservation Corps” in the style of FDR’s public jobs programs during the Great Depression. Of course, one of the key differences you should note immediately is that we’re not a nation without jobs in the long-term. If that were the case, some sort of massive public jobs program might start to make sense. But we’re actually a nation with a vast number of jobs waiting to be refilled as soon as the government allows all of the employers to open up again. The difference is neither subtle nor unimportant.
The plan also calls for massive federal funding to “encourage” or incentivize the public into dumping all of their gas-burning cars and rapidly replace them with electric vehicles or hydrogen cell cars. Of course, you can’t go to an all-electric fleet of vehicles without sufficient charging stations being available, so the taxpayers will also fund a massive expansion of such facilities, particularly in rural areas.
This is an obvious move to try to gin up some excitement among the climate activists in the liberal base. But much like Biden’s initial focus on amnesty for illegals, is this really where the country’s priorities are today? Thanks to a combination of massive expenditures in pandemic relief and cratering revenues with the economy still largely shut down, we just finished logging a record-shattering expansion of our budget deficit. We’re looking at trillions more in losses before the end of the year. And now you want to dump another two trillion onto the pile for this?
What will we be getting in exchange for all of this debt? Advances in renewable energy. And Biden is proposing this at a time when we just recorded the largest production capacity and domestic consumption of natural gas in recorded history. Oh, and natural gas prices for consumers hit a record low at the same time. We’re swimming in natural gas, a far cleaner and more environmentally friendly fuel than coal or oil. And we’ve got enough of it to take us well into the second half of the century.
But Joe Biden wants to walk away from all of that progress so he can make Greta Thunberg’s fans happy. All the while, we’ll be setting additional trillions of dollars of magical money on fire. This whole shift to allowing Democrats to run everything is just looking better and better, isn’t it?
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