The Republican Congressional leadership has agreed to multi-year proposed tax extenders for wind and solar development and to 2016 Federal appropriations without including most of the climate policy riders that Republicans approved earlier in the year. These riders were included in the individual agency appropriation bills restricting Executive Branch expenditures for climate regulation implementation. The reasons why these developments are counterproductive are explained in my book, Environmentalism Gone Mad.
One of the alleged reasons for this is that the Republicans, who control both houses of Congress, appear to have believed that it was best to avoid any possibility of a Federal Government shutdown due to a possible Presidential veto and believed that they had to have Democratic votes to avoid such an outcome. As a result of opposition to this approach among some Republicans, the leadership of both houses reportedly felt that they had no alternative but to seek Democratic votes. These votes were forthcoming only in return for funding the Obama Administration’s climate boondoggle and allowing EPA to continue implementing its climate regulations.
The Result: Taxpayers and Ratepayers Get Stuck with the Bill
As a result, the Administration appears likely to have taxpayer funding (the wind and solar tax credits paid by taxpayers) and no prohibitions preventing it from continuing with its climate boondoggle. This is despite the lack of any incentive for other nations to impose equivalent CO2 emission reductions as a result of the very weak outcome of the Paris COP 21 meeting.
One report asserts that Obama will even be free to give taxpayer funds to the UN Green Climate Fund (GCF) for use as it sees fit to funnel developed country funds to less developed countries supposedly to counter “climate change.” Previously Republican senators said that they would work to block GCF funding unless the Senate was allowed to vote on ratification of the Paris agreement. I regard this leadership proposal as a sell out of the taxpayers who will be stuck with paying for the tax credits as well as the GCF funding and the greatly increased electricity bills resulting from the EPA power plant regulations.
Final Congressional approval of the leadership proposal may not come until next week in case taxpayers and ratepayers should want to register their disapproval with their elected representatives before most of the formal votes.