In an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Monday, Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, indicates that the Obama Administration isn’t corrupt.
But.
His primary critique is that the the Recovery Act was simply “walking-around money” that “went to places it shouldn’t have gone to.” He gives two examples.
First, he claims that money went to green jobs, “even if those green jobs didn’t happen.” Well, Rep. Issa, they did happen. In fact, a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute found that the Recovery Act created and saved a million green jobs - including tens of thousands in California. And as we’ve often noted, green jobs are what Forbes has called, “the sweet spot in an otherwise bitter economy.”
The other example Issa gives is mind-boggling.
Late last year, GE announced that it was making a heavy investment in electric vehicles; specifically, that it was buying 12,000 Chevy Volts, a plug-in hybrid vehicle from GM. Those 12,000 cars represent a substantial portion of the vehicle’s initial run.
And in this, some - particularly partisan bloggers - see conspiracy. GE must be receiving the full $7,500-per-vehicle tax credit that consumers receive on the cars, right? And the government bailed out GM! And GE’s CEO received an appointment from the President! And, and… Oh, sorry. I started to hyperventilate.
That’s the background for Issa’s argument against the Recovery Act: that GE might be receiving a subsidy for converting to an electric fleet of vehicles. The $375,000,000 subsidy he claims is what GE would receive if it took a subsidy on each car and if it received the full subsidy. (It’s worth noting that buying that volume of anything will have a discount attached, mind you, so it’s not like GE is paying sticker price anyway.)
Issa takes this critique farther. He calls the Volt “a really bad car. This is a car that gets basically less than 30 miles per gallon.” That’s not correct. The type of car it is, a plug-in hybrid, defies easy categorization in the current miles-per-gallon schema. By at least one estimate, it gets 93 miles-per-gallon.
And then there’s the comparison he makes at the end: that this subsidy to GE is like the Iran-Contra scandal.
You read that right: a business claiming a tax credit on a purchase is morally the same as illegally selling weapons to an enemy in order to fund a secret war in Central America.
Would hate to know what voting to continue hand-outs to big oil companies is equivalent to.
