Posted on 10/25/2019 11:43:30 AM PDT by Red Badger
Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer is preparing to spend hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on a plan that would fast-track the elimination of nearly every gas-powered vehicle in the country.
The senate’s top Democrat wants to spend a massive amount of money enticing Americans to exchange their gas-guzzling vehicles for an electric car. Schumer’s proposal, which he announced in a New York Times editorial Thursday, shows Democrats are lurching leftward on the issue.
“That’s why I am announcing a new proposal designed to rapidly phase out gas-powered vehicles and replace them with zero-emission, or ‘clean,’ vehicles like electric cars,” Schumer wrote after suggesting scientists agree that climate change represents an imminent threat to the U.S.
He added: “The goal of the plan, which also aims to spur a transformation in American manufacturing, is that by 2040 all vehicles on the road should be clean.” The plan would remove more than 63 million gas-powered cars from the road by 2030, Schumer estimates.
Schumer’s office expects the proposal to cost roughly $392 billion over a decade. The Washington Post referred to the idea on Friday as “essentially ‘Cash for Clunkers’ on steroids,” referring to a policy from the Obama-era encouraging Americans to trade their old vehicles for fuel-efficient cars.
Cash for Clunkers was the mechanism allowing the federal government to offer incentives of between $2,500 and $4,500 to citizens who traded in their older vehicles for newer ones. The policy received a lot of media play, but critics called the idea a failure even if it was designed with the best of intentions.
Under Schumer’s plan, car owners will get a rebate starting at $3,000 if they trade in their car for an electric vehicle, with the amount of rebate going up the longer the vehicle goes without recharging. The rebate could dramatically exceed the existing $7,500 tax credit for electric vehicles.
Citizens are not the only ones who’d get a windfall. States and cities would also receive $45 billion in funding to install charging stations. The plan, which does not have legislative text, would also provide $17 billion to grant programs to build new factories for electric vehicles.
The senator’s idea comes as Democrats continue shifting leftward on environmental issues.
House Democrats introduced a Green New Deal in February calling for a “10-year national mobilization” toward a series of goals aimed at fighting global warming. The deal’s proponents called for the eradication of fossil fuels before lawmakers stripped the idea out of the final product.
Conservative analysts are already criticizing Schumer’s plan.
“The money would be wasted. Even if Americans stopped driving entirely today and forever, there would be no discernible impact on, much less improvement of the weather or climate,” Steve Milloy, a lobbyist on behalf of the energy industry, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
BREAKING: I just announced bold new plan to:
1. Make #CleanCars affordable
2. Make charging infrastructure accessible to all
3. Make America a leader in clean car manufacturing
And here’s how it works: pic.twitter.com/YhR02werTu
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) October 25, 2019
I will never drive an electric car - period!
Sticks Nix Schumer’s Picks
A great idea, along the lines of kruschev planting millions of acres of corn. What could go wrong?
I must have missed the plans to build the nuclear power stations require to supply the power increase.
And the incentives to spur the expansion of mining to obtain the metals needed to build out the infrastructure.
Or are those included in the second wish the genie is going to provide?
How about.....NO!
Sure. Electric cars are the way to go.
Right California?
And may I presume Chuck U. still gets about in a gas guzzling limo or SUV? At taxpayer expense?
I thought so.
Then don’t even go there at the hundreds of thousands of dollars he spends in the air.
Again - at taxpayer expense.
Keep digging Dems. Your whole sale selling out to the Church of Climate hysteria is going to cost you millions of blue collar votes. You already own the hysteric’s votes so this costs you everything and gains you nothing.
And zero concern about freedom.
The “party of choice”.
The only choices commies like are being able to kill someone (babies, old people, suicide) and drugging up everything and anything sexual. ALL, BTW, immoral.
Where is the right to make things? The right to choose what to use? Nope. Not with commies.
And where will that electricity come from?
If the idea was even a good one, to replace gas vehicles with electric, it still would need to be done in a gradual manner.
It wouldn’t be prudent to dump ever vehicle in American onto the grid over a few short years.
Schroomer is an idiot.
I will never drive an electric car - period!
______________________________________
Oh come now. If you ever visit me - I’ll let you drive my golf cart around the community all you like. You’d enjoy it.
Insanity
These bastards really do want to destroy America.
Well then, Chuck — require all Senators and all Senate staffers own and ride in ONLY electric vehicles. No exceptions. Lead by example, Comrade Chuck!
It’s what 6-ways-to-Sunday totalitarians do. The arrogant elites know better, right Chuck?
Windmills on the roofs of the cars, silly.................
Having just spent 2000 miles on the Interstates, all I can say to that is ..”Good luck with THAT, Schmuckie!”
Sometime in the not near future electric cars may be brought down in cost and with longer lived batteries sufficient to make them competitive with gasoline powered cars. Then the market will have more and more of them on the road. If the issue is forced by fiat then the effect will be to take the society back to horse and buggy days without the horses and the economy will be totally flattened. We will quickly devolve to a society of vast poverty and a tiny totalitarian aristocracy that continues to shrink as the asset base itself continues to shrink. An effective military will be insupoprtable and third rate nations will be vying to carve up North America.
Cash for Clunkers 2.0?
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