Political Quotes

“I believe it is time for Congress to stop the Big Wind gravy train. Subsidies for developers of huge wind turbines will cost taxpayers $14 billion over 5 years, between 2009 and 2013, according to the Joint Tax Committee and the Treasury Department. This is more than the special tax breaks for Big Oil, which Congress should also end. $6 billion of these Big Wind subsidies will come from the production tax credit for renewable energy, which Congress temporarily enacted in 1992. The prospect for the expiration of this tax break at the end of this year has filled the Capitol with lobbyists hired by investors wealthy enough to profit from the tax breaks. President Obama even wants to make these tax credits permanent. According to the Wall Street Journal, this is a ``make or break moment'' for wind power companies. There are three reasons the Big Wind subsidies should go the way of the $5 billion annual ethanol subsidy, which Congress allowed to expire last year. First, we cannot afford it. The Federal Government borrows 40 cents of every dollar it spends. It cannot justify such a subsidy, especially for what the Nobel Prize-winning U.S. Energy Secretary calls a ``mature technology.'' Second, wind turbines produce a relatively puny amount of expensive, unreliable electricity. Wind produces 2.3 percent of our electricity, less than 8 percent of our pollution-free electricity. One alternative is natural gas, which is abundant, cheap, and very clean.…”