Frank Lasee writes at Real Clear Energy about the impact of Democrats’ preferred spending and energy policies.
Workers have been earning higher wages in the last few years, but inflation has consumed those gains. Many Americans feel like they are on a treadmill and cannot progress toward their goals, including saving for retirement or buying a new house. If Congressional Democrats get their way and pass their multitrillion-dollar spending bill, we’re going to see the inflation beast become even more ravenous.
Speaker of the House Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Schumer’s colossal and excessive spending and regulation bill will make it more difficult for American workers to thrive. Provision after provision in the bill would either directly or indirectly increase inflation by increasing the cost of energy use, while also raising taxes.
Democrats will force the early closing of coal plants that still have years of productivity. When we close coal plants early, it costs electric users money and causes electric rates to go up. Because we must pay off the costs of building the coal plant and the clean coal technology added just a few short years ago.
While still paying for a closed coal plant, American taxpayers would also fund thousands of wind towers and thousands of square miles of solar panels. In addition, we would have to build more natural gas plants for when the sun isn’t shining, or the wind isn’t blowing, which is a whopping 70% of the time.
This forced premature closing of coal plants and the building of new electrical power sources aren’t going to make one iota of difference to the climate. Communist China emits more pollution than the United States, all of Europe, India and Russia combined. China burned 4 billion tons of coal in 2020, half the global total. The Chinese are slowing down, but instead, are planning on building dozens of more coal plants.
It is ruinous to make Americans pay more for their electricity when the largest emitter in the world is doing nothing to combat climate change.
