A recent Government Accountability Office report revealed that the Obama Administration spent $501 million of taxpayer money on ‘green energy training programs’ for jobs that do not exist in the green energy sector.
The half-a-billion dollar training program, funded by the 2009 Stimulus Bill, resulted in 55% employment; this equates to only 11,000 jobs, many of which are part-time.
Fox News spoke to Stephen Moore, senior economic writer for The Wall Street Journal, who further exposed the failure of the 2009 Stimulus plan to jumpstart green-energy business:
“There have been so few successes; it’s actually hard to find any successes. You know, we have spent, not just through this job training, but all of the subsidies we have given to green energy over the past five years…we have spent over $100 billion supporting this industry…and only 2% of our electricity comes from wind and solar power.”
The GMO audit revealed that the Administration did not have “reliable green job market information” before funding the program, which resulted in the heavy overfunding of training programs for jobs that did not exist. The Administration’s gross overestimation of ‘green business success’ has left thousands of highly-trained workers jobless.
““You could send someone to Harvard for less cost,” Moore noted.
This failed initiative is not just another reminder that the federal government has no business picking winners and losers in the private sector (their winners always seem to lose); the distribution of the job-training funds has revealed blatant favoritism towards the public employee unions and special interest groups that endorsed Barack Obama for President.
The Bureau of Labor statistics defined a ‘green job’ as one that could be linked directly, or indirectly, to a beneficial outcome for green energy. According to Moore, this loose definition enabled stimulus money to be spent on training programs for janitors and bus drivers (both unionized positions) as well as environmental lobbyists who promoted ‘green energy causes.’
Further investigation has revealed that the stimulus money allocated for green energy training went to organizations that openly endorsed Barack Obama in 2008. The Utility Workers Union of America enthusiastically endorsed Obama in 2008 and received $4,993,922 to spend on ‘green training programs.’ The Blue-Green Alliance—an organization that unites unions and environmental organizations—received $5,000,000 from the stimulus grants to spend on training “dislocated workers, women, and minorities”; the organization’s most prominent affiliate, Sierra Club, also endorsed Obama in 2008.
This $500,000,000 loss on a failed, government program is yet another example that the Obama-agenda is linked much more closely to the unions and special interest groups than it is to the American taxpayer.