President Biden delivers remarks promoting the Build Back Better Agenda at Germanna Community College in Culpeper, Va., on Feb. 10, 2022. (Office of the President of the United States/Public Domain)
While America struggles to buy groceries, President Joe Biden has a green slush fund worth billions of dollars, and he’s not afraid to use it.
Recent revelations uncovered that the CEO and lobbyists of Rivian, an electric vehicle manufacturer, held a quiet meeting at the White House with President Biden’s climate czar, John Podesta. That’s right, the same John Podesta who served as chairman of Hillary Clinton’s ill-fated 2016 presidential campaign before being pulled from the ranks of profitable green consulting to oversee distribution of $369 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). President Biden selected a political operative with green company ties to dole out the goodies from one of the largest slush funds in history. Now, green CEOs who are hemorrhaging cash are beating a path to his White House office, presumedly with hat in hand.
According to media reports, Rivian is deep in the red. Last year, it lost $6.8 billion. In 2021, it lost $4.7 billion, which is in addition to the $1 billion lost in 2020. These massive losses happened as electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers enjoyed large subsidies both to build and sell their vehicles. In fact, President Biden went out of his way to praise Rivian in early 2022, even though its stock had already lost half its value on its way to losing 87 percent of its value since 2021. Losing more than $12 billion in less than three years would normally be a problem in the business world, but in the upside-down reality of President Biden’s green agenda, that gets you a meeting at the White House.
The Rivian name on one of the company's new electric SUV vehicles in San Diego on Dec. 16, 2022. (Mike Blake/Reuters)
Tax dollars are flowing from the IRA so quickly that the Department of Energy’s inspector general (IG) may be running out of adjectives.
Earlier this month, in testimony before the Senate, the IG said, “The current situation brings tremendous risk to the taxpayers.”
Red flags about American dollars flowing to foreign companies or just being wasted here at home are going up, yet according to budget watchdogs, their concerns are met with deaf ears by senior Biden administration officials. The IG noted that there were “billions and billions of dollars lost or stolen” from federal COVID-19 funds, and Biden’s slush fund is even bigger. To put it bluntly, the green vault is wide open, and the grifters are lining up.
Here’s a particularly galling example. One little-known aspect of the IRA are so-called green banks. For greenies, the scheme is simple: regular banks will not fund their boondoggles, so they need a taxpayer-backed entity to dole out cash. Unlike regular banks, these green banks do not need to make a profit to stay afloat because the government is their funder.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham was caught trying to set up a green bank without the trouble of going through the elected legislature. The board of the bank will be green nonprofits that will be in charge because, as the New Mexico climate czar put it: “We’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars. ... This greenhouse gas reduction fund is a remarkable little beast.”
Recently, Ms. Grisham announced the green bank anyway. The slush fund is open for business, and everyone has their hand out.
Congress is watching the “green bank” scheme because it knows it is ripe for abuse. The problem is clear: The White House put a political operative in charge of what is nothing more than a political fund. For President Barack Obama, they were too big to fail, but President Biden is taking it further. When it comes to his failed agenda, his green boondoggles are “too favored to fail.”
Larry Behrens is the communications director for Power the Future and is the author of the book, “Sabotage: How Joe Biden Surrendered American Energy Independence.” He’s also appeared on Fox News, Newsmax, and One America News.
