Committee Conducts In Depth Assessment of President’s Green Jobs Agenda: Not Very Green, Not Many Jobs

WASHINGTON, DC - The Energy and Commerce Committee today released an analysis prepared by majority staff assessing President Obama’s so-called green jobs agenda and documenting the failure of these programs to spur economic growth and job creation. The president continues to advocate significant taxpayer spending in this area as a way to address environmental concerns and create much-needed jobs, but this analysis shows the green jobs experiment has failed to pan out. Incorporating testimony gathered from committee hearings, academic research, and media reports, the analysis describes the administration’s efforts as an “unfolding failure,” concluding, “It clearly hasn’t created many jobs, and when its direct and indirect impacts are taken into account, it may well be costing them.” The report also highlights many of the legislative solutions pursued by the committee over the last 18 months. Today's in depth assessment follows this week's Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee report, “Where are the Jobs? - The Elusiveness of Job Creation under the Section 1603 Grant Program for Renewable Energy.”   

The analysis measures the impact of key components of the administration’s green jobs agenda - increased spending, higher energy costs, and more regulation - on jobs and the economy. The report details that the administration’s policies have not produced the jobs promised and have failed to achieve significant environmental improvements. 

The analysis also touches on our country’s extended unemployment and highlights the trends occurring across the Atlantic: "For 40 consecutive months and counting, the United States has endured a national unemployment rate higher than 8 percent, and speculation about the role of stimulus-funded programs continues unabated. … The European nations that once were ahead of the U.S. in adopting green jobs programs are now ahead of the U.S. in abandoning them. It is time for America to do the same. With the global economy faltering, we should be vigorously embracing free market principles, not forsaking them.”

Consistent with the committee’s work over the past 18 months, the committee report explains, “Evaluating the President’s so-called green jobs effort is not a criticism of clean energy technologies, which play an important role in powering the future, but rather is an indictment of the Obama Administration’s management, execution, and record of its numerous programs that were falsely sold to the American people for their job potential when the jobs were never going to materialize.”

The Energy and Commerce analysis comes on the heels of the Department of Energy’s “Beyond Solyndra” propaganda slideshow.

For a full copy of Not Very Green, Not Many Jobs, click HERE.

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