Billions for Green Jobs - Whatever They Are

Obama put in another plug for his Cap & Tax plan to get us away from using that evil oil and coal. The only problem is that the technology is not there for a replacement. As someone said this evening, if a new technology were available, some enterprising entrepreneur would be making billions today. It does not exist. This article by Byron York questions the effectiveness of the green jobs portion of the stimulus plan by pointing out that no one in the administration can define what a "green job" is. This is supported by the Dept. of Labor's request for comments in the Federal Register.

Excerpt: Buried deep inside a federal newsletter on March 16 was something called a "notice of solicitation of comments" from the Bureau of Labor Statistics at the Department of Labor.

"BLS is responsible for developing and implementing the collection of new data on green jobs," said the note in the Federal Register, which is widely read by government bureaucrats and almost never seen by the general public. But the notice said there is "no widely accepted standard definition of 'green jobs.'" To help find that definition, the Labor Department asked that readers send in suggestions.

"According to the administration, the Recovery Act contains more than $80 billion in clean-energy funding to promote economic recovery and develop clean-energy jobs," Grassley wrote. "However, it has come to my attention that the (Labor Department) is just now attempting to define what a 'green job' is. Interestingly, this comes more than a year after the Recovery Act was signed into law and after millions of dollars in funding have already been distributed for green jobs."

Since the Labor Department is looking for a definition after spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on green jobs, Grassley asked, then what definition of green jobs did it use when it spent the money? The question applies beyond the Labor Department. What about all the other government agencies that are spending zillions on green jobs? They don't have a widely accepted definition, either.

Meanwhile, even as it searches for the definition of a green job, the Labor Department is assuring Congress that everything is going gangbusters on the green-job front. "The demand for green-job training opportunities is enormous," Solis told a Senate committee in March, adding that the Labor Department had by that time already spent $500 million on green jobs, with more to come. "The department has been unable to keep pace with the record number of applications for grants."

Last year, Republicans complained that the Obama administration planned to spend billions on an ill-defined concept of green jobs. Now, billions have been spent, and many more will be spent, and the administration still can't tell you what a green job is. Just look at the Federal Register. Read Byron York's article here.