Heidi Alexander: “Thank you very much, Mr. President. The Finance Committee is considering something we call in the Senate tax extenders.…”

“Thank you very much, Mr. President. The Finance Committee is considering something we call in the Senate tax extenders. One of those is the wind production tax credit. For the next 10 minutes or so, I wish to address that law which has been on the books for more than 20 years. It expired in December, and, in my view, needs to stay expired. One of the things we remember most about the late President Ronald Reagan, is what he said about government programs: The closest you will come to eternal life on this Earth is a government program. Well, my nomination for the most glaring example of a government program that seems to have eternal life is the wind production tax credit--the Federal taxpayers' subsidy for what I would call ``big wind.'' Here is what the wind production tax credit does. Let's say you build one of those 20-story turbines and the wind turbines begin to go around, as they will about one-third of the time to produce electricity. So for every kilowatt hour of electricity that you produce, the taxpayers will pay you 2.3 cents. That is a pretty good deal because the wholesale price of electricity, depending on where you are at in the country, might range from about 3 cents per kilowatt hour to 7 cents per kilowatt hour. So let's say you are in Oregon or a part of the country where they have pretty cheap electricity and you sell wind for 3 cents a kilowatt hour. You will pay 1 cent of the money you get in Federal corporate tax.…”