President Joe Biden has signed a $1.5 trillion spending bill that will fund the government through September and allocate billions in funding for federal agencies as well as defense spending.
Don’t be fooled by the headlines that make it sound like this bill is just for aid to Ukraine. While $13.6 billion will broadly go to aid Ukraine, billions of dollars are also going to all the federal agencies
One surprising thing that H.R. 2471 allocates money for is the climate. Of course, green energy policies are always sneaking into policies these days, but in the midst of soaring gas prices and oil hitting record prices, this is ill-timed.
Tucked away 431 pages into the bill, the Department of Energy is given $44.9 billion. This is an increase of $2.9 billion from fiscal year 2021, the House Appropriations Committee reported.
$3.2 billion of that is allocated to Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
“The bill provides a record-level $3.2 billion, an increase of $338 million above the fiscal year 2021 level. This funding provides for clean, affordable, and secure energy and ensures American leadership in the transition to a global clean energy economy,” the committee wrote.
The “Science” division of the Department of Energy will get $7.475 billion.
What does the “Science” part of the energy department do? Great question.
“The Office of Science funds basic science research in physics, biology, chemistry, and other science disciplines to expand scientific understanding and secure the nation’s global leadership in energy innovation,” the House Appropriations Committee outlined.
Another $825 million will go to Fossil Energy and Carbon Management.
This is an increase of $75 million from fiscal year 2021.
The Fossil Energy and Carbon Management sector will advance “carbon reduction and mitigation in sectors and applications that are difficult to decarbonize … while assisting in facilitating the transition toward a net-zero carbon economy and rebuilding a U.S. critical minerals supply chain,” the House Appropriations Committee wrote.
As if all these billions of dollars were not enough for green energy initiatives, the Environmental Protection Agency was given money specifically for environmental justice.
Under the $9.56 billion outlined in the bill for EPA, $100 million of that is for “environmental justice activities.”
That is an $83 million increase from fiscal year 2021, the House Appropriations Committee reported.
Meanwhile, Americans are paying an average of $4.29 per gallon of gas at the pump, AAA reported.
Don’t worry, though; tens of billions of dollars are being spent on aggressive green energy policies to save the planet.
With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the global oil market has been on a wild roller-coaster and everyone is hurting from it.
Gas prices climb day by day.
The average oil price for North America is $102 per barrel, according to Markets Insider’s reporting on West Texas Intermediate (the benchmark for North American oil).
Anyone who drives in America — which is nearly everyone, of course — is hurting from these gas prices.
President Joe Biden promised the American people in February that he would “work like the devil” to lower gas prices, Forbes reported.
That promise was made before the Ukraine-Russia war even started. With the start of the war, prices continued to rise. Biden’s promise was clearly empty.
During his State of the Union Address, which took place after the invasion of Ukraine, Biden promised to try to mitigate the rising prices once again, saying he would release oil from the national reserve.
But the 30 million barrels of oil that he promised to release can’t make a dent in gas prices. Americans consume close to 20 million barrels of oil per day, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported. 30 million barrels would only keep the nation going for about a day and a half.
Yet, in the midst of this oil crisis and the economic damage that high gas prices are wreaking on Americans, Congress had the audacity to focus funding on renewable energy rather than focus on the issue at hand.
Everyone knew that prices would go up if Russia attacked Ukraine, but for the government to then approve spending on radical green energy plans is just adding mockery to our misery at the gas pump.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.