As President Joe Biden counts down the days he has left in office, he’s busy trying to burnish his legacy. What he should be doing is apologizing for unleashing waste and fraud of epic proportions.
Politico, to its credit, this week reported on where the $1.6 trillion that Biden approved in spending ($1.1 trillion) and tax breaks ($500 billion-plus) for “clean energy” and infrastructure investments went.
The good news is that most of it hasn’t been spent. The bad news is that the rest appears to have vanished without a trace.
Politico found that more than half of the $1.1 trillion in new spending hasn’t even been “obligated,” which is the first step in dispensing the cash. In May, it reported that only $125 billion of that $1.1 trillion had actually “gone out the door.”
In other words, all of Biden’s bragging about his unprecedented “investments” in clean energy and infrastructure programs was bogus.
That’s good news, because there is a chance that President Donald Trump will cancel unspent funds, or at the very least grind these programs to a halt. None of that will be easy, given that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle like nothing more than spending other people’s money.
But the real scandal isn’t what hasn’t been spent under Biden, it’s what has been spent.
As Politico reports: “A $42 billion expansion of broadband internet service has yet to connect a single household.” And “a $7.5 billion effort to install electric vehicle chargers from coast to coast has so far yielded just 47 stations in 15 states.”
That’s 47 charging stations out of the 5,000 that were supposed to be built with that $7.5 billion, to say nothing of the 500,000 Biden said he’d get built by 2030.
Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey asks the right question: “That money went somewhere over the last couple of years. Where did it go, and how much is left?”
That’s just the tip of the spending mystery.
It’s not clear what the rest of the money produced, either. How many jobs has the $551 billion in tax breaks for clean energy and semiconductor manufacturing produced? Who knows. Intel got almost $9 billion in CHIPS money and then laid off 15% of its workforce.
Biden also handed out $27 billion as part of the “Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.” What has that money accomplished? As far as we can determine, nothing more than promises so far.
Has the $7 billion to install solar panels in low-income communities resulted in one panel being installed? What about the $14 billion “clean investment fund” or the $6 billion in “clean communities accelerator” money? Where have those billions ended up? The biggest recipient of that “investment fund” cash, Climate United Next, has so far announced just two programs that add up to $280 million.
Morrissey goes on to say: “The new Congress had better start asking those questions and getting answers under oath, because there’s a fair chance that this administration used it as back-door subsidies for political allies and donors.”
He’s no doubt right. Taxpayers are owed a full – and honest – accounting of where that $1.6 trillion went and what it produced, if anything.
https://issuesinsights.com/2025/01/03/biden-boondoggles-boggle-the-mind/
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