Many of us who opposed the Stimulus bill when it was signed into law over a year ago did so by pointing out its many flaws: wasteful projects, short-term gains, long-term debt, and an overall lack of accountability (with the recovery.org website listing billions of dollars going to congressional districts that don’t even exist). But now we see even more proof that we were right. From Ed Morrissey at hotair.com:
When Barack Obama signed Porkulus over a year ago, one of its signature programs promised an explosion of jobs in the construction and contracting industries thanks to federal subsidies for weatherizing older homes. In fact, as early as April 2009, Obama began bragging about the new jobs that his tax credits on weatherization and energy-efficiency remodeling would bring. Eleven months later, the Associated Press reports that the explosion has turned into a multibillion-dollar implosion (via Fausta and JWF):
After a year of crippling delays, President Barack Obama’s $5 billion program to install weather-tight windows and doors has retrofitted a fraction of homes and created far fewer construction jobs than expected.
In Indiana, state-trained workers flubbed insulation jobs. In Alaska, Wyoming and the District of Columbia, the program has yet to produce a single job or retrofit one home. And in California, a state with nearly 37 million residents, the program at last count had created 84 jobs. …
But after a year, the stimulus program has retrofitted 30,250 homes — about 5 percent of the overall goal — and fallen well short of the 87,000 jobs that the department planned, according to the latest available figures.
As the Obama administration promotes a second home energy-savings program — a $6 billion rebate plan — some experts are asking whether that will pay off for homeowners or for the planet.
”A very rosy picture was painted that energy efficiency would be a great way to create jobs and save money,” said Michael Shellenberger, an energy expert who heads the Breakthrough Institute, an Oakland-based think tank that is financed by nonpartisan foundations and works on energy, climate change and health care issues. ”The Obama administration risks overpromising again.”
What happened? Like most of us predicted, the heavy bureaucracy of the federal government ground the program to a halt. Some states are just now getting the funds, such as Texas, after disputes over wage controls. In fact, the Department of Labor didn’t even get around to clarifying the rules until September, when weatherization should have been completed for maximum energy savings. They had to reclarify the rules “a few months later,” AP reports, after counties across the nation complained about the first declaration.
Instead of creating 85,000 jobs with the $5 billion, the Department of Energy (which runs the program) claimed it created 8500 jobs, a tenth of the goal. That would put the cost of each job at a whopping $588,235.30, and that’s only if the DoE has its numbers right. Those numbers appear to have been calculated using the White House “saved or created” algorithm, which wasn’t exactly known for its accuracy. In any case, those jobs would likely be temporary anyway, which means we just tossed away $5 billion on temp work that mostly didn’t occur, and when it did, got done poorly.
We have also seen a lot of money that Congressional leaders claimed would create American jobs instead go to workers in China, Germany, and Japan. From the Liveshots blog at foxnews.com, comes this report from William La Jeunesse:
While President Obama promises to create 5 million green energy jobs, using billions in American tax money to subsidize renewable energy, new research shows most of that money is going overseas, creating more jobs in China, Germany and Japan than in the U.S.
"The purpose of those funds was to spur American innovation and help create American jobs and I think it is fair to say we are off track," said Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R- Tenn.).
Blackburn and others in Congress want to reintroduce legislation requiring a "Buy American" clause after a new analysis of green energy projects shows 79 percent of stimulus money for wind and solar projects went to overseas companies, according to the Investigative Reporting Workshop. A second study by Bloomberg New Energy Finance shows Chinese corporations taking over the solar panel market, jumping from a 3 percent share in California early in 2007 to 46 percent today.
The Chinese are "sweeping the table clean" in the photovoltaic market, according to one analyst who did not want to be named. "The Chinese have such low manufacturing costs, the U.S. may need protections like we have in farming."
The numbers don’t surprise everyone. Roughly half of all wind turbines and two-thirds of all solar cells in the U.S. are manufactured overseas, according to the Energy Information Authority. Many established European manufacturers enjoy a competitive advantage, since the E.U. has long subsidized clean energy.
The purpose of the stimulus was to help level the playing field. U.S. subsidies were intended not just to put Americans back to work, but to help U.S. manufacturers transition to clean energy manufacturing. President Obama said as much in February:
"Make no mistake: Whether it is nuclear energy, or solar or wind energy, if we fail to invest in these technologies tomorrow, we’ll be importing those technologies instead of exporting. We will fall behind. Jobs will be produced overseas instead of here in the United States of America. That is not a future that I accept."
And yet that is exactly what is happening, with the help of American stimulus money.
* Australian company Babcock and Brown received $178 million to install Japanese turbines on a Texas wind farm
* French Co. enXco received $69 million to install German turbines on an Indiana wind farm.
* Eurus Energy from Japan received $91 million to erect its towers in Texas.
No one paid much attention to these American subsidies until the Department of Energy granted $450 million to A-Power of China to install its turbines in Texas. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-NY, asked Secretary Steven Chu to reject subsidies to companies that buy their components abroad, especially when renewable energy companies are closing plants, like Vestas in Colorado, and laying off workers in Pennsylvania, like Gamesa.
Blackburn agrees. "If you are going to create green jobs," she says, "if you are going to create incentives, those should be American jobs and the American taxpayer needs to realize where those jobs are taking place."
The situation is no better in solar, where increasingly Chinese manufacturers are getting U.S. contracts to undercut American suppliers.
According to a Bloomberg New Energy Finance report in January, "Q4 2009 saw a dramatic rise in Chinese MG (megawatts) by application" with three of the four largest solar panel suppliers now from China. The other is from Taiwan.
"I don’t see Europe or the United States becoming major producers of solar products - they’ll be consumers," says Thomas Zarrella, of GT Solar. That is not to say any new energy installation doesn’t provide some American jobs.
Bill Henning of American Vision Solar in Los Angeles says the cheaper imports make solar more affordable. "People are able to spend more money in the economy because of what they are saving," he says. "So solar, in and by itself, is doing a lot, outside of where it’s manufactured." And while it is true American workers get jobs wiring solar panels or erecting wind towers, the real money is in manufacturing.
A new report from the Renewable Energy Policy Project finds that 70 percent to 75 percent of the total labor for any new wind or solar project is in manufacturing the component parts, not in marketing or sales. Rhetorically, that is something the president understands, but many say his policies do not support.
"Because I’m convinced that the country that leads in clean energy is also the country that leads in the global economy. And I want America to be that nation. I don’t want us to be second place, or third place or fourth place when it comes to the new energy technologies. I want us to be first."
Not only has the Stimulus bill proven to be a failure on these counts, but the many useless projects like bridges for turtles to cross streets, extra funding for the Census (which is already projected to run way over-budget) and others. That, plus all the tax-cuts were only temporary, so they made very little difference to most people. But we did have a record budget deficit!
Alan Grayson (pictured)is the guy who said the Republicans plan for health care is for people to "die quickly." What an ass. Anyway, he got a death threat, which actually doesn’t surprise me. Someone said "If you vote for health care, I’ll kill you." Then Grayson made a Nazi allusion, though, saying "Well, I think that’s what they said about the burning of the Reichstag, if I recall correctly." Yes, Alan, bring up the Nazis, which is what people always do when THEY HAVE NO ARGUMENT! YOU YOU WEREN’T SUCH A F^CKING MORON, YOU WOULDN’T BE GETTING THESE KIND OF PHONE CALLS. GET A LIFE, GROW A PAIR, AND STOP WHINING. Also, I do understand it is kind of funny that I made reference to Obama using tactics similar to 20th century dictators, in the same post that I attacked a man for making a Nazi reference, but if you have half a brain you’ll see there is a big difference in our arguments. 