We have observed before the oddity that after having won the Democratic presidential nomination by promising to govern as a centrist, Joe Biden caved to the demands of the radical Left that he had just vanquished in the primary. We noted with interest when Biden decided to appoint Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a radical if ever there was one, to co-chair his climate panel. Now, Biden is out with a revised climate plan that is far to the left of what he had proposed during the primary and much closer to the vision of Ocasio-Cortez’s extreme Green New Deal.
In the primaries, Biden ran on a climate plan that would have spent $1.7 trillion over a decade. His new plan would spend $2 trillion in the first four years. This is proposed at a time when the United States faces an unprecedented debt that the Congressional Budget Office says is already on track to exceed the World War II record next year.
Previously, Biden vowed for the power sector to be free of carbon emissions by 2050. Now, he has moved the date up to 2035 (much closer to Ocasio-Cortez’s target of 2030). Such an unrealistic goal would mean eliminating carbon-based forms of power, which currently generate 62% of all energy in America. The fracking boom has been a major boost to the economy and has done more than anything else recently to reduce carbon emissions, yet Biden plans to eliminate it rapidly.
Biden is exploiting the coronavirus crisis in an effort to promote his sweeping economic stimulus proposals. This is ridiculous for several reasons. First and foremost, this isn’t the typical economic crisis in which there is an argument for government intervention to create jobs and increase demand. Today’s economic turmoil is created by the government (justifiably or not) forcing businesses to shut down, as well as by people’s fears about resuming normal life during a pandemic.
The fact that the economy added a record 7.5 million jobs in May and June by partially reopening is a testament to the country’s underlying economic strength and the potential for a bounce back without fiscal stimulus from taxpayer dollars. But that bounce back will be contingent on what happens with the coronavirus and state and local reopening plans. If there were, say, a vaccine by early next year, it would lead to a swift economic recovery that would not require government spending to “upgrade 4 million buildings and weatherize 2 million homes,” as Biden’s plan promises.
Biden, with an astounding lack of self-awareness, is trying to recycle ideas that were failures during the Obama presidency, such as creating “green jobs” with federal spending on infrastructure.
Biden is again pitching spending on solar power despite his role in the Solyndra fiasco. That solar energy firm was chosen as the poster child for a green energy future. At the 2009 groundbreaking of a Solyndra factory, Biden used the same sort of language that he’s been using today about his climate plan.
“This announcement today is part of the unprecedented investment this administration is making in renewable energy and exactly what the Recovery Act is all about,” then-Vice President Biden said. “By investing in the infrastructure and technology of the future, we are not only creating jobs today, but laying the foundation for long-term growth in the 21st-century economy.”
In reality, Solyndra was a bust, becoming a symbol of crony capitalism, as Obama administration officials ignored warnings about the company to rush through a $535 million loan guarantee. In 2011, Solyndra went bankrupt, losing more than half a billion dollars in taxpayer money and firing 1,100 workers.
There are also lines in the new climate plan, that fill us with foreboding, about investing in new faster rail projects. In 2011, Biden announced a six-year plan to build a “national high speed rail network.” The administration’s efforts were such a disaster that the project stalled even in California, a liberal state dedicated to making it happen. Even left-wing Gov. Gavin Newsom was forced to scale the project back because it was unworkable, and there is no path forward for the promised Los Angeles to San Francisco line sold to state taxpayers a dozen years ago.
Beyond the substance of Biden’s climate plan, its mere existence is another signal that regardless of how the nominee positioned himself during the primaries, he would as president be largely knuckle under to the radical demands of his party’s left wing.
