The person in the hot seat was Jigar Shah, administrator of the larger but lesser known of the two Biden Administration funding programs for renewables. The Wall Street Journal called him the $400 billion man. Which, I suppose would make John Podesta the $370 billion man.
From E&E News (Politico's Energy & Environment vertical), October 20:
Department of Energy officials had a rough day on Capitol Hill on Thursday as lawmakers and the department’s own watchdog accused them of lax oversight of billions of dollars in climate spending.
DOE Inspector General Teri Donaldson told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee the agency was at extreme risk of fraud and financial mismanagement because of a mandate to spend Inflation Reduction Act and infrastructure bill money quickly.
“We have massive amounts of money, all of these things happening at once create a level of risk that may candidly be described as unprecedented,” said Donaldson.
Donaldson said she was “gravely concerned” DOE will dole out significant sums of money to companies controlled by adversaries like China and Russia.
Even some Democrats, usually less inclined to go after the Biden administration over spending mandates they support, were concerned by the stark picture Donaldson painted.
“Some of the testimony we just heard sounds like we’re just throwing caution to the wind,” said Chair Joe Manchin (D-W.Va). “Just gonna throw the money out there.”
David Crane, undersecretary of Energy for infrastructure, and Jigar Shah, head of DOE’s loan office, appeared at the hearing and defended the agency’s work.
“The Department of Energy has an ability to do due diligence on these projects that many private sector banks don’t have, because we have access to the 10,000 engineers, scientists and experts,” Shah said. “The average due diligence process for loan programs office is over 12 months.”
But their efforts did not quell lawmakers concerns and, in some cases, anger. Here are four takeaways:Shah lambasted on ethics...
....MUCH MORE
If interested see also:
Big Money: "The $400 Billion Man Running America’s Clean Energy Transition"
No, not John Podesta, he only has $370 billion to dole out. (NYT, Sept 2, 2022)
Ford- Korea's SK Joint Venture To Get $9.2 Billion US Loan For Battery Plants
The Cost Of The Inflation Reduction Act Is Rapidly Inflating
"E.P.A. Is Said to Propose Rules Meant to Drive Up Electric Car Sales Tenfold"
This is President Obama's "I've got a pen [executive orders], and I've got a phone [administrative state]".
That was in January 2014 but the antecedents of this particular push go back to the University of Denver Law School in 2008* as justification for what they wanted Barack Obama to do if (when) he won the 2008 election.
This approach was favored by John Podesta, at the time, 2014 -2015, counselor to President Obama and currently in charge of the smaller but better known of the two green financial honeypots, which combined are doling out 3/4 trillion dollars.
From the New York Times....
April 12: "America’s $800bn climate splurge is feeding a new lobbying ecosystem"
Following on the mentions of John Podesta and the two huge honeypots of money in yesterdays "E.P.A. Is Said to Propose Rules Meant to Drive Up Electric Car Sales Tenfold" here are some of the; I was going to say flies but the graphic looks like locusts, the critters being attracted to the feast....
July 18 The Cost of The Inflation Reduction Act Has Inflated To Almost $1 Trillion
Wharton is going to get blackballed by the O'Biden-Harris
administration if they keep this up. They also released a study showing
that the cost of the Admin's student loan forgiveness would be in the
four-comma club as well:
Turley: "Wharton Study: Biden Tuition Debt Forgiveness Could Cost $1 Trillion"
This is the high end of the range Wharton was referencing just last week: Penn Wharton: "Forgiving Student Loans: Budgetary Costs and Distributional Impact".
I did catch the comments from the subsidy czar in May:
Increased green tax-credit costs are a sign of success, White House's Podesta says
Which, when I saw it again this morning reminded me of a sales guy who, whenever I raised an objection to whatever he was pitching would say "That's they beauty of it." I finally asked him why he would say that and he told me "It's the all purpose turnaround. I say it, it stops my client's thoughts for a couple seconds and gives me time to figure out what I want to say next."
I used a variation of it earlier today in the introduction to "News You Can Use: "ESG' in US finance job titles comes with 20% pay premium'".
