As of this writing, it’s impossible to know exactly how much Green New Scam spending has been cut by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Even members of Congress have no idea. But I’m not worried. President Trump can terminate all Green New Spending any day he chooses.
Goldman Sachs estimated that the climate spending portion of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (i.e., the Green New Scam) was worth about $1.2 trillion by 2032. The total may actually have been greater as it’s extraordinarily difficult to kill off federal subsidies.
By the time President Trump was inaugurated, the Biden administration had spent somewhere around $150 billion of the money, including much in red states buying Republican politicians so that they would be reluctant to roll back the spending during opportunities for fiscal responsibility like the OBBBA.
The House version of the OBBBA may have cut as much as 50 percent of the remaining Green New Scam spending. The Senate version that passed on July 1 “gutted” what the House did, according to Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas). So where are we? Who knows. The good news is it really doesn’t matter.
Green New Scam spending on wind turbines, solar panels, electric vehicles and utility-scale batteries is aimed at reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. The supposed need to reduce such emissions is factually premised on a 2009 determination, called the “endangerment finding,” by the Obama EPA. The finding concluded that man-made emissions of greenhouse gases are harming the public health and welfare through global warming.
Regardless of how you feel about climate science, the Supreme Court made the Obama EPA’s determination de facto illegal in its 2022 decision inWest Virginia v. EPA. In that case, the Court determined that EPA requires the express authorization by Congress to engage in major undertakings such as greenhouse gas regulation. No such authorization has ever existed.
On Day 1 of his second term, President Trump ordered the endangerment finding to be reviewed with an eye toward terminating it. President Trump has, after all, repeatedly stated that he believes global warming is a “hoax.”
In April, President Trump issued an Executive order directing that regulations made illegal by recent Supreme Court decisions could be terminated summarily, and without the lengthy public notice and comment usually required by the Administrative Procedure Act. This makes total sense. Why keep illegal regulations in effect?
If the illegal endangerment finding were terminated summarily there would be no factual basis for any Green New Scam spending. President Trump could simply stop cutting checks for subsidies, thereby solving the Green New Scam problem.
The Trump administration, of course, would soon find itself in court, but that is nothing new. And President Trump would clearly have the high legal and moral ground: Our $37-trillion-in-debt government ought not be wasting taxpayer money on subsidies that are premised on an illegal regulation.
Coincidentally, the EPA submitted just its proposal to roll back or terminate the endangerment finding to the White House Office of Management and Budget this week. No one outside the government knows what’s in the proposal or when it would be issued.
There are two general ways to accomplish rollback of the endangerment finding. The preferred way is what has been previously described. It’s quick and easy. The other way is to do it through standard public notice and comment, which will take longer and be much less certain in outcome. Both would wind up in court, but the preferred way tees up the issue better from a legal standpoint.
Republicans are often squirrely when it comes to green issues, imagining that the public is more supportive of green policies than it really is. President Trump had the courage to drop multiple 30,000-pound bombs on a nuclear facility in Iran. It is certainly much easier to simply terminate an illegal regulation we can’t afford. He should just do it now.
Steve Milloy is a biostatistician and lawyer, publishes JunkScience.com and is on X @JunkScience.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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