The Pittsburgh Bridge Collapse and the Infrastructure Bill Congress put climate pork ahead of roads and bridges
President Biden couldn’t have picked more grimly ironic timing to visit Pittsburgh to promote the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill he signed last November. Hours after a snowy bridge in the city collapsed, injuring 10 people, the President promised to fix all of the nation’s 43,000 faltering bridges. “We’re sending the money,” he assured.
Sorry, he isn’t. The bill he signed doesn’t have nearly enough money unless his Administration plans to borrow from the Energy Department’s green energy venture-capital fund. The bill includes $40 billion in new funding for bridges, a pittance compared to the $156 billion for mass transit and rail that are bleeding cash due to generous labor agreements and low ridership. Mass transit had already received $70 billion in pandemic relief.
The infrastructure bill’s other big winner is green energy. The Department of Energy is getting $21 billion for “demonstration projects” for clean hydrogen, advanced nuclear, carbon capture and other green largesse. There’s also $11 billion for states and utilities for grid “resilience” (i.e., backing up renewables) and $6 billion to rescue nuclear plants that renewable subsidies are driving out of business.
This is on top of its expanded loan guarantee program. “Our Loan Programs Office (LPO) is back in business, with $40 billion in loan authority to finance large-scale clean energy deployment projects,” the department boasts on its website. It notes that loan guarantee applications have increased 23-fold. Expect many more taxpayer-backed startups like Solyndra to go bust.
In other words, the government will spend tens of billions of dollars on renewables that make the electric grid less reliable, and then tens of billions more on transmission lines, batteries and nuclear to back up unreliable renewables. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg will also get $7.5 billion for an electric-vehicle charging network, and schools $5 billion for “clean-energy” buses.
Democrats want to spend another $555 billion on climate in the Build Back Better bill. Democrats this week also introduced a bill that they say is needed to compete with China. It includes still more climate spending, including $3 billion for solar manufacturing and cash for labor unions.
Government is about setting priorities, and bridges and roads took a distant back seat to green pork in the infrastructure bill.
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