Obama's Green Energy Agenda Kills Jobs
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing this morning titled “How Obama’s Green Energy Agenda Is Killing Jobs.” The oversight committee is headed by California Republican Darrell Issa. The committee has also published a 36-page document on Obama’s job killing green agenda.
In Issa’s preview statement prior to the hearing, he stated:
“Facing the worst recession since the Great Depression, President Obama has confronted this crisis by promoting green jobs as a major component of his recovery plan. He has said that these programs would create five million jobs within ten years. The President has also cited the efforts of other nations as the rationale to try to subsidize our way to energy independence.
“Unfortunately, the other nations who tried this experiment have struggled to recover. After three years and billions of spent taxpayer dollars later, the American people have received very little return on the President’s investment, and this country too, struggles to recover.
“A green jobs fueled recovery is a theory, and is yet unproven. Numerous elements of President Obama’s plan have been called into question. This activity includes a Bureau of Labor Statistics effort to legitimize the notion of questionably-designated green jobs by counting them as an official metric. It also includes the appearance of political favoritism in the distribution of green energy grants and loan guarantees.
“The Oversight and Government Reform Committee will also examine how President Obama’s green jobs agenda has been combined with a concerted policy and regulatory campaign impacting American carbon-based energy production companies and employees.
“The result is powerful and demonstrable: access to affordable and abundant domestic supplies has been restricted—with job growth and economic recovery choked in the process.
“Today, unemployment is at a staggering 9.2 percent. The ill-fated green jobs experiment has done little to create jobs or speed this recovery, and by many accounts it has had the opposite effect.
“By examining these challenges, Congress can then take action to remediate them by making job creation its top priority.”
The House report found several key findings on Obama’s green agenda:
• Three years and nearly a hundred billion dollars later, taxpayers have received little return from President Obama’s investments in “green jobs;”
• Labeling an occupation as a green job does not mean it has any special economic worth;
• The guise of “green jobs” has become a political rallying cry aimed to unite environmentalists and union leaders in a deliberate effort to consolidate an ideologically- based agenda;
• Labor unions are profiting from the many so-called “green” programs because there are often “strings attached” that require hiring union workers, the payment of union-level wages and other mandates;
• Evidence suggests that the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has been subjected to undue political influence to advance this agenda and is now using gimmick-accounting methods to count “green jobs” even though the term is vague, poorly defined, and has led to inaccurate counting;
• The metric of a “green job” is nothing more than a propaganda tool designed to provide legitimacy to a pre-determined outcome that benefits a political ideology rather than the economy or the environment;
• The Obama Administration’s “green jobs” agenda has been driven by political favoritism and accusations of pay-to-play relationships benefitting private investors with the security of public loan guarantees, such as in the much-publicized case of Solyndra;
• The Solyndra loan guarantee was further politicized when the federal government’s “investor” standing was subordinated to the interest of a private investor—one who happened to be a prominent Obama fundraiser;
• The President’s effort to force a transition to “green energy” has pursued twin policies of raising the price of fossil fuels and subsidizing “green energy” at the expense of the domestic energy production sector. Domestic oil, gas and coal industries are being choked under a slew of aggressive federal regulations, despite the proven long-term, job- creating record of this industry;
• There exists an undeniable relationship between America’s prosperity and its access to affordable energy sources that if ignored, will setback economic growth;
• The Obama Administration is hypocritical in its energy policy: it promotes traditional energy sources abroad through loans and diplomacy, while openly discouraging it at home;
The 2-hour hearing will be available in the webcast archives on the committee web site. Be sure to watch it and download the House report.
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The American people must be collectively out of their minds to allow this to happen to our nation. How in the world did we, as the best experiment ever tried by mankind, suddenly become lap dogs to the Liberal/Progressive movement which for many years has tried to destroy the very Democracy that has protected all of us during most of our lifetimes? There was a time in the not too distant past when we would have charged these people with wrong doing and prosecuted them to the hilt without batting an eye. Now, we seem to be cowering as if we are more afraid of what the Liberals might think than we are of our Muslim enemies who state that they hate us. Liberals don't scare me one bit but the inactivity of our citizens does.
Secretary of Energy Chu is on record saying he wants gas prices to be as high as Europe's. Secretary of the Interior Salazar defied a court ruling to lift the ban on drilling in the Gulf, then the gov't sabotaged the "end" of the moratorium via prohibitive permit processes. Obama promoted off-shore drilling in Brazil, loaning her $2 billion for the purpose, saying in a speech the U.S. would be her "best (oil) customer" (at the same time his policies reduced the Gulf to a dead zone, as he kept his jack boot on the region that produced 30% of our domestic oil supply). If Obama were a true believer in "greening the planet," he surely would not promote drilling off the coast of Brazil. I believe he is not only a national wealth redistributor but a global wealth redistributor as well. HOW can our lawmakers and we the people allow these subversive actions (fast reducing our wealth & standard of living, as intended, I believe) to go on one more day!!!