“I do so like green eggs and ham. Thank you. Thank you, Sam-I-Am.” - Dr. Seuss, “Green Eggs and Ham”
Republican senators may or may not like green eggs and ham, but they certainly love green pork.
On Wednesday, the Senate voted 98-0 for a cloture motion, so they could end debate and move forward on H.R. 636, the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill. That bill should not be controversial, but Democrats have suddenly hijacked this must pass bill, with the consent of the Republican Party.
The Democrats have added a slew of green energy tax subsidies, or as they are known on Capitol Hill, “Tax extenders.” This comes at a time when yet another major green pork company, SunEdison has retained bankruptcy counsel and is expected to declare bankruptcy. The American taxpayer could lose $2 billion dollars with this bankruptcy.
These “tax extenders” were eliminated in late 2015. These were mostly green energy slush funds for wind power, solar, geothermal, fuel cells and a host of other wasteful projects that cannot survive on their own without the taxpayers bailing them out. Conservatives cheered the expiration of these tax subsidies for the green pork industry at the time. But conservatives should have known better.
The last time the Republicans were serious about cutting spending, Newt Gingrich was the speaker of the House. The leading green porker is South Dakota Sen. John Thune. When Thune was asked about these green pork items being added to the FAA authorization bill, he told Politico, “There will probably be some folks on our side who don’t want to add these, but I think many of our members probably will.”
In 2010, after the Tea Party arose in response to the out of control spending of the Obama Regime, Republicans told Americans that if we just gave them the Congress back, they would cut spending. Americans gave the Republicans the House of Representatives and they kept spending. The Republicans told Americans in 2014, if you give us control of the Senate too, we will cut the spending. America did and the GOP is now rewarding liberal billionaires with hundreds of millions, if not billions in green pork subsidies.
Liberal billionaire Warren Buffett has been one of the biggest recipients of green pork subsidies. He has candidly described why he spends money on wind power generation stations. In 2014, he told an audience in Omaha, Nebraska, “I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire’s tax rate. For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”
Perhaps someone in the Republican Party should ask the obvious question. If these don’t make sense, except with a tax credit, why is the Congress subsidizing these massive green pork projects?
The Republican Party claims to be the party of fiscal sanity and fiscal restraint. Yet every time they are given the chance, all the do is spend money. Real Americans need to tell Republican Senators like John Thune that we do not like green pork.
Perhaps the GOP should change its logo from the Elephant to Sam-I-Am, offering everyone heaping piles of green pork. If the Republican Party is not going to cut spending and wasteful green pork projects, who will?
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