Stearns' Oversight Hearing Finds President's "Green-Jobs" Agenda Produces Very Few Long-Term Jobs

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"The President's stimulus effort led to an influx of money into green programs, and the Department of Energy's (DOE's) Loan Programs Office has given out nearly $35 billion, including to recipients such as Solyndra," said Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL), Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. "Many are now bankrupt, and thousands of people have been laid off."

A study* of the White House's green-jobs agenda found that methods to calculate the creation of green jobs are largely unreliable, and that it produces very few long-term jobs. In addition, the report notes that the Section 1603 grant program administered by DOE and the Treasury Department that was created under the stimulus bill to provide cash payments to renewable energy projects has resulted in higher costs to the taxpayer than previously anticipated.

During today's Oversight hearing, Dr. Kenneth Green, Resident Scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, testified, "But evidence suggests government is a very poor venture capitalist when it comes to investing in applied R&D, and even worse in trying to help self-proclaimed "technologies of tomorrow,' cross over the so-called "Valley of Death.' The landscape is positively littered with the debris of the President's "green technology" investment programs, with billions of dollars of taxpayer money thrown into businesses that were of dubious potential from the start."

In a question about the Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting that there are 3.1 million green jobs, Stearns asked, "Is there a coherent, rational definition of green jobs, or is it so broad that it's meaningless?"David W. Kreutzer, Ph.D., Research Fellow in Energy Economics and Climate Change for?The Heritage Foundation, responded, "It seems to be very, very broad…but when you look at 50 percent of the jobs in the steel mill industry are green, you have to question if there's any meaning at all to this."

Stearns also asked, ""For example, are jobs producing nuclear energy, are they considered green jobs?" Kreutzer answered yes. Continued Stearns, "If so, aren't the President's anti Yucca and otherwise anti new nuclear policies actually impeding creation of new green jobs?" Kreutzer again answered yes.

"This hearing has found that green jobs are just as hard to find as shovel ready jobs," concluded Stearns.

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