Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 06/16/2011 1:26:55 PM PDT by Mount Athos
In today’s Washington, both parties espouse reining in out-of-control spending, earmarks, crony capitalism and corporate welfare. Even once-sacrosanct ethanol subsidy schemes are teetering on the chopping block.
But even as public disgust over subsidy boondoggles mounts, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is flirting with cramming through a new black hole of energy subsidies. Their project is H.R. 1380, absurdly titled “the NAT GAS Act.” If enacted, it would represent our fourth ethanol-style boondoggle, along with corn ethanol subsidies, solar subsidies, and wind subsidies.
The bill promises a tax credit of up to 80% of the price of a natural gas vehicle, from $8,000 for passenger cars up to $64,000 for heavy trucks. As if the current $7,500 tax credit from the rest of us to underwrite a middle-class curbside bauble, the $41,000 “green” Volt version of Government Motors’s $16,000 Cruze, wasn’t offensive enough.
H.R. 1380 is estimated to cost taxpayers between $5 billion and $9 billion over five years. Leading supporter T. Boone Pickens cynically pitches his project by arguing that if we don’t like it after five years, we can just let it expire. Kind of like the wind tax credit, which expires every three years or so, only to be reinstated because we can’t “kill jobs” — not even the phony, bubble kind. Not after constituencies have been created demanding to be fed.
Some things die hard in Washington, even now that there’s a new class of nominal reformers in the majority of the House, which was where promoters of this new subsidy scheme started. H.R. 1380, which was introduced on April 6, garnered about 180 co-sponsors almost immediately. Over 80 Republicans supported the bill, and its champion was Tea Party stalwart John Sullivan, who’s from Pickens’s backyard of Oklahoma.
If it passes the House, this measure would be sure to pass the Democrat Senate and then get signed into law by President Obama — or at minimum be used to hold hostage some item Republicans really want.
It gets worse. Although Pickens is the most visible champion of the bill, in the past couple of weeks it’s come to light that this is actually a major new play of none other than George Soros. Soros is of course known for going long or short on bets that fit with the plans of his many other activities designed to influence government and remake the world into something more in line with his left-wing views.
As stock-watcher GuruFocus wrote in “Stocks that George Soros Keeps Buying,” Soros has accumulated 5.5 million shares in something called Westport Innovations Inc. (WPRT).
GuruFocus noted Soros “added his positions in the Dec. 31, 2010 quarter by 38.98%, again in the Mar. 31, 2011 quarter by 22.56%. Soros bought a massive 1.8 million shares at the early of 2010, and he has been buying ever since . . . and his holdings has [sic] steadily and interestingly increased by 1 million every quarter, this is a stock that should be looked more closely and for understanding why he has so much confidence in this stock. No other guru but one currently has any shares of this stock and that guru only owns 280,000 shares not 5.5 million.”
Answering this question somewhat, StreetInsider.com’s latest missive reads, “Westport (WPRT) Set to Explode Upon Passage of Nat Gas Act — [CNBC's Jim] Cramer.”
So it’s little wonder that Republicans are beginning to abandon the bill as word gets around about what’s being perpetrated, in part under their name.
In recent days, early sponsors Rep. Mike Coffman (CO-6), Rep. John Kline (MN-2), Rep. Cory Gardner (CO-4) and Rep. Scott Tipton (CO-3) withdrew their support for the bill. They joined Reps. Glenn Thompson (PA-5), Tim Griffin (AR-2), Mike Kelly (PA-3), Larry Bucshon (IN-8), Steve Pearce (NM-2) and Senate aspirant Todd Akin (MO-2), who had already withdrawn their support from this policy obscenity.
I ran into one of these members at an airport recently, and he explained how he became a co-sponsor after being buttonholed on the floor with a sales pitch that proved to be something less than complete, only to hear an earful from staff when they learned of the move. Upon learning what the bill was really about, he withdrew his support for it, at the risk of alienating a colleague and a couple of billionaires, which, sadly, is something members of Congress rarely do.
But it’s less rare than it used to be. And three more Republican oddities — from Florida, Virginia and Texas — are rumored to also be on their way to withdrawing their support for the bill.
The Republicans’ pitch of having learned from their profligate past is made ever more difficult when scores among their ranks jump on a brand new energy subsidy scheme, providing favors to special interests groups that happen to have active political operations. But it’s not too late, and some are seeing the light.
I *like* clean burning natural gas! It’s the fuel of tomorrow. And we have plenty of it. Natural gas can be a brilliant success story for America going forward!
!!!!!!!!BUT WE DO NOT NEED TO SUBSIDIZE IT!!!!!!!!!
Stop ALL subsidies for EVERYTHING. Farm subsidies, R&D subsidies, ethanol subsidies, and so forth. And start NO new subsidy programs. Period!
Westport, the company mentioned, supplies the nat gas engines to Peterbilt, who recently booked an order for 200 LNG fueled trucks.
Agreed. Like that’s gonna happen. Budget Reality is this, as stated by a great American and Secretary of the Treasury “What comes down the (Capitol) hill represents the fiscal reality of the U.S. Government, and it is invariably a command to spend according to the whim and the myriad political debts of Congress”
Its encouraging to know that Republicans have to be lied to in oder to get their support. Democrats vote for things knowing they’re bad.
Better yet, we need a commercial starring Soro’s & Obama/other dems.
That’s because California is now requiring LNG trucks to work on the docks there. Non-LNG/superhyperultraclean diesel trucks are banned there.
Has nothing to do with the competitiveness of the fuel, everything to do with idiot government mandates.
Cramer???? Hah-ha! Take anything Cramer has to say with a tablespoon of salt, or short it.
However that may be, this particular 200 truck order was for an oil industry service company to be used in south Texas.
As for the subsidy, the TX lege prempted the feds during their recent regular session and provided subsidies for nat gas as a fuel. The only detail I recall about that was that there was subsidy money being used for the benefit of off road construction vehicles that was shifted to the nat gas fuel subsidy. I think the subsidy was to promote nat gas fueling stations.
Weird, I had heard they were to be used in CA.
Either way, the legislature did do that. I’m not happy about that, but quite a lot of the state and local government fleets do have quite a few natural gas powered vehicles and their filling stations have been few and far between. The intent of the subsidy is to encourage construction of more NG fuelling stations so that the state can benefit from competition (for example, in Dallas, there’s only one company operating all the NG filling stations) and thereby recoup the subsidy and then some in reduced fuel costs.
So, if refueling stations are needed let private enterprise build them.
I did say I wasn’t happy about it, though I understand why the legislature did it. Again, not happy about it. However, there are more important things on the agenda at the moment.
“H.R. 1380 is estimated to cost taxpayers”
This guy is talking like Nancy Pelosi. A tax credit doesn’t “cost” taxpayers anything. It keeps the money out of the hands of D.C. elites who want to spend it on food stamps for illegal aliens.
It’s not a spending subsidy where more taxpayer money is spent. It’s a tax credit where less taxpayer money is confiscated.
And while I am not a big fan of tax credits (I’d rather have the Fair Tax), and am opposed to ethanol credits and “green energy” credits as boondoggles, the Natural Gas Act is a national security issue.
We have to stop sending petrodollars to the ragheads in the Middle East (or to Chavez) who want to cut our throats. And we cannot rely on the Muslims to continue the oil shipments if war breaks out with Isreal.
We need energy independence and we can have it by running our vehicles on natural gas. But it has to be jumpstarted with the infrastructure. We need natural gas fueling stations and we need natural gas vehicles. But neither will be supplied without the other already being in place.
That’s where this bill can jumpstart us on the way to American energy independence, a lot more jobs, and a boost to our economy. With no government spending, but with less taxes being taken in while the credit is in place. After the fueling stations are in place and a sufficient number of semi trucks are running on gas, the program can run on its own without credits.
It’s as much a national security issue as building our own weapons in the U.S. instead of importing them from China.
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