By Samuel Schaefer
Drill Down Staff
A $27 billion “green fund” created through the Inflation Reduction Act has turned into a bonanza of cronyism for former members of the Biden Administration and Democratic Party, according to a Daily Caller Foundation report.
President Biden had hoped the Inflation Reduction Act would be his golden child, “one of the greatest legislative feats in decades,” as Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer put it. Now, it may become the signature example of cronyism in this president’s term.
According to the report, three of the finalists applying for a piece of the $27 billion “green fund,” which is to be distributed by the Environmental Protection Agency, have former officials from the Biden, Obama, and Clinton administrations serving on their boards.
One of the finalists, the Coalition for Green Capital, has David Hayes and Cecilia Martinez, climate officials from the Biden and Obama Administrations, on its board. The two vice chairs for Power Forward Communities, another funding finalist, are Phyllis Caldwell and Ari Matusiak, who worked closely with President Obama. Phil Angelides, a board member for the group Climate United, was appointed to the Treasury Department’s community development advisory board in 2021.
“This is one of the largest programs in the history of the EPA and is looking like one of the most egregious examples of the revolving door since the invention of doors,” says Michael Chamberlain, head of the watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust.
The clear conflict of interest between the applicants and the awarders is only exacerbated by the September 2024 deadline to distribute all $27 billion. Will there be enough time to properly vet and judge the applicants?
The Daily Caller Foundation also revealed that the EPA hosted a meeting with candidates for the fund, allowing them to get “constructive feedback” on their proposals. Chamberlin comments: “Holding a chummy meeting with special interest organizations with deep connections to political leadership isn’t a good look.”
If Americans needed an example of what lack of oversight and waste can lead to, then they need look no further than China, where the government’s incentivization of solar panels production, even by dairy farmers and toy makers, has created a global solar bubble that is bound to burst. Even accepting the Democrats’ premise that anti-inflation legislation warrants a vast expenditure on green energy, the rank cronyism raises doubts about whether green energy goals will actually be met.
In fact, on Climate United’s website, the organization lists climate change as an urgent global challenge, but also lists “inequality, racial and gender inequities.” The connection between pet social issues and energy policy is not immediately obvious; however, those doling out the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund seems to favor green organizations that also claim to be champions of racial and gender issues. With the limited oversight of this fund, who can say that money will not go to those issues and not green energy? Maybe that’s their real goal?
