To Cut “Greenhouse Gases,” EPA Doles Out Dollars to Groups Tied to Biden, Democrats

Three organizations closely associated with the Biden administration and the Democratic Party were awarded $14 billion by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Thursday.

The EPA announced the first recipients of grants from the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF), a creation of the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Of the $20 billion doled out Thursday, Climate United got $7 billion, the Coalition for Green Capital (CGC) received $5 billion, and Power Forward Communities (PFC) pocketed $2 billion.

According to the Daily Caller, “Each of the three organizations are [sic] planning to route at least 50% of their investments to ‘low-income and disadvantaged communities,’ in line with the Biden administration’s ‘Justice40’ commitment to ensure that at least 40% of the benefits of climate-related spending flows to such communities to pursue ‘environmental justice.’”

All this spending is conveniently occurring in a presidential-election year; the IRA mandates that the entire GGRF be disbursed by September 30. The program’s “unusually accelerated timeline for disbursement” and “new and complex funding structure” could create “increased vulnerability to fraud and execution errors,” the Republican members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee warned in an October letter to EPA Administrator Michael Regan.

“From most angles, this program — along with most of the green energy programs from the Inflation Reduction Act — appears tailor made to avoid oversight of waste, fraud and abuse and to dole out taxpayer funds to environmentalist special interests, many of whom have deep ties to the Biden administration,” Pete McGinnis, communications director for the Functional Government Initiative, a government-transparency advocacy organization, told the Daily Caller in November. “Therefore, it’s not surprising at all to see those who are in line to receive this $14 billion have strong connections to many of the same interests … who pushed for the legislation and crafted the program at the EPA.”

Similarly, Michael Chamberlain, executive director of the government-watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust, called the GGRF recipients “a veritable who’s-who of insiders connected to” President Joe Biden.

That is an apt description of several directors of the anti-carbon coalition Climate United. Phil Angelides is a former chairman of the California Democratic Party, state treasurer, and failed gubernatorial candidate. Anthony Foxx was secretary of transportation under President Barack Obama, whose vice president, of course, was Biden. Harold Pettigrew was appointed by Biden to the Treasury Department’s community development advisory board. Patrice Willoughby was executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus during the Obama administration and now serves as a senior vice president for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Dolores Huerta is a co-founder of the United Farm Workers Association.

The CGC, a consortium of “green banks” (institutions that lend money for environmental initiatives), is also riddled with Biden-linked directors. Cecilia Martinez formerly served on Biden’s White House Council on Environmental Quality and in Obama’s EPA. Julie Greene Collier is chief of staff for the Biden-backing American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). And David Hayes of the Natural Resources Defense Council, another Biden-endorsing group, was Biden’s climate advisor and also held senior positions in the Clinton and Obama administrations.

“David Hayes is the consummate insider, having shuffled between government and special interests influencing government climate policy for decades. Looking at his portfolio while he was in the Biden Administration, it is virtually inconceivable that he did not work on the legislation that created this program and likely the executive branch’s creation of this very program itself,” Chamberlain told the Daily Caller. “Anyone wondering why trust in government has essentially disappeared need look no further than right here.”

CGC’s other Democratic connections include its founder, Reed Hundt, who “worked in the Clinton administration … and was a close ally of Vice President Al Gore,” noted the Daily Caller. Plus, the organization “has partnered with several existing ‘green banks’ known to have political connections to Biden and the Democratic apparatus.”

PFC — one of whose members, Rewiring America, “advocates for massive societal mobilization to get rid of fossil fuels and make the American economy reliant on green energy,” according to the Daily Caller — has its own collection of Democratic directors. Board chairman Shaun Donovan held two high offices in the Obama administration. Vice chairmen Ari Matusiak and Phyllis Caldwell were Obama officials, too.

PFC is partnering with “several pro-Democrat labor unions” on its EPA-funded project, wrote the Daily Caller. What’s more, Rewiring America, of which Matusiak is founder and CEO, “is a sponsored project of the Windward Fund, a nonprofit managed by the liberal dark money behemoth Arabella Advisors.”

“Protect the Public’s Trust and others have been raising alarms about this program’s potential for misuse and cronyism. Sure enough, the three announced recipients are organizations closely tied to the Biden administration and the Democratic party,” said Chamberlain. “These awards could not have been more of a poke on the eye to those concerned about conflicts of interest, the revolving door, and protecting taxpayers from potential greendoggles.”

“The EPA is handing out billions of taxpayer dollars to the administration’s associates, political allies and, perhaps, future coworkers without any assurance that money won’t make it into the coffers of our foreign adversaries like China,” said McGinnis. “Oversight and accountability seem to be afterthoughts to the goal of rolling out loads of cash to collaborators on the radical agenda that inhibits our nation’s efforts for energy independence. Today, the swamp is getting deeper and our government more dysfunctional.”