Opponents have called it “another Solyndra waiting to happen.” An estimated $2.6 billion offshore wind project near Massachusetts could be awarded a $350 million Department of Energy (DOE) loan guarantee and a 30 percent federal tax credit, according to recent reports. The much beleaguered 468 megawatt, 130 turbine Cape Wind …
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported last week that even with improvements in the economy, food stamp participation rates have reached all-time highs. Since 2008, enrollment has increased by 70 percent, reaching a record 47.8 million this past December. Funding for the food stamp program—or, as it’s now called the …
Just what America needs: More taxpayer-funded green energy projects. The Department of Energy (DOE) and the U.S. Internal Revenue Service released plans to re-allocate more than $150 million in remaining manufacturing tax credits for “green” energy projects originally authorized by the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the stimulus bill), …
Despite billions of dollars in unused loan authority remaining under the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Loan Programs Office, negative publicity surrounding the loan guarantee programs (which offer taxpayer dollars to government-approved companies) has tampered with applications, according to a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. More than $51 billion in …
Department of Transportation (DOT) Secretary Ray LaHood is moving on. In an e-mail to DOT employees announcing his plans to leave, LaHood highlighted what he considers to be “remarkable accomplishments” during his four years leading the agency: We helped jumpstart the economy and put our fellow Americans back to work …
Bad ideas never seem to die. But the proposal to create a national infrastructure bank to federally fund transportation and infrastructure projects with taxpayer dollars is one such idea that President Obama and lawmakers in the 113th Congress should put to rest. A recent Politico article noted that the departure …
Unless Congress acts, March 1 will trigger a $55 billion-per-year ($43 billion in 2013, as the fiscal cliff deal delayed the cuts for two months) cut in national defense, known as sequestration, which will weaken the United States’s ability to defend itself. But this does not have to happen; Congress …
Job training programs created by Congress have resulted in overlap and duplication, according to a new report from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) that focuses on workforce development initiatives in Oklahoma. Coburn used his home state as a case study for the effectiveness of federal job training efforts. His office found numerous …
House Speaker John Boehner famously dropped a copy of President Obama’s stimulus bill on the House floor during the debate over its passage, calling it a 1,100-page bill “that not one member of this body has read.” But the stimulus is only one example highlighted in Jerrol LeBaron’s documentary “Fools …
