Former EPA Administrator ‘Very Concerned’ About EPA’s $27 Billion Green Bank

(CNSNews.com) – Former EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler expressed concerned Thursday that the Inflation Reduction Act gives $27 billion to the Environmental Protection Agency on top of its annual $9 billion budget to act as a bank for green new deal projects. 

“Well, I have to admit I’m concerned. EPA’s annual budget is only $9 billion dollars, and this is a $27 billion plus-up to the agency. That is my understanding about $7 billion will be used for state banks,” he told Fox Business’s “Kudlow” on Thursday.

“Those would probably be a little better run, but there is so much, in the legislation for this, so many loopholes how the money can be spent, and I keep going back to 2009 when Joe Biden was in charge of implementing the stimulus package and hundreds of millions of dollars in green technology money was wasted in 2009,” he said.

“Over 40% of the companies that received monies then went bankrupt within two years. You also had over 50% of the recipients were campaign contributors to the Obama-Biden campaign in 2008. In 2009 when Joe Biden ran it, it ended up being kind of a slush fund to reward their friends and companies that were not sound,” Wheeler said.

“I’m very concerned how this money is going to be spent, and EPA does not have the staff currently. They would have to staff up quite a bit to get in a position where they could manage and oversee this large sum of money,” the former EPA administrator said.

Host Larry Kudlow predicted that the money will “one big slush fund” for Democratic donors and politicians.

“We had a small team of career staff that handled a much smaller, similar bank for water projects, called the WIFIA program, and those people, it took us several years to get them trained up, get them up and running. That program has worked fairly well, but that was not six months and not $27 billion. They don’t have the staff that can implement this that quickly,” Wheeler said. 

Former OMB Director Russell Vought predicted that EPA won’t spend the money well, and it will be a slush fund. 

“The sizes that we’re talking about are so big – $40 billion for the EPA when their annual budget is $10 billion. The IRS getting $80 billion when all of Treasury is 15 billion-dollar agency and Department of Education is a 75 billion-dollar agency. These are massive numbers,” Vought said.

“When you’re told by Congress you just have to shovel the money out the doors, it goes to pet political causes, the non-profits that they want to reward. It’s going to end up being a massive subsidy to the Democrat climate extremism sector in this country and it’s going to do long-term damage to the country,” he said.

“I just want to give you an example.  When we talk about environmental justice, one particular example of this is five million dollars for Save the Trees, which is going on walks to increase awareness on tree canopy inequity in the coverage of those tree canopies, and to look at that and to say how is that impacting local communities.  Save the trees. Walk for the trees,” Vought said.

“It is solar gardens in the communities. It is bike share programs. It’s nonsense. It may be something someone wants to pay out of their own pocket, but when we have $30 trillion in debt this is the kind of thing that makes our country such that we won’t be able to rebound from it, because we’re crippled not just from the costs of the debt but by the saddling of the fact of this new sector is now receiving taxpayer subsidies instead of checks from big liberal donors,” he said.

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