PPT’s Skepticism About Biden’s Greendoggle Continues to Gain Converts

WSJ: “Trump’s EPA vs. Biden’s Dark Climate Money”

The Wall Street Journal editorial board is one of the latest to chime in with its analysis of the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund saga, known around here as the “greendoggle.” Their Thursday morning editorial repeats the suspicions Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) first expressed in May 2023. WSJ writes,

 

Imagine if Republicans gave the Trump Administration tens of billions of dollars to dole out to right-wing groups to sprinkle around to favored businesses. That’s what Democrats did in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The Trump team’s effort to break up this spending racket has led to a court brawl, which could be educational. 

 

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin recently canceled some $20 billion in grants that his Biden predecessors rushed out to leftwing groups from the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. Democrats established this quasi-private green bank in the IRA to avoid government oversight of climate spending. 

 

Mr. Zeldin claims the freeze is needed because of ‘substantial concerns regarding program integrity, the award process, programmatic fraud, waste, and abuse, and misalignment with the Agency’s priorities.’ He’s right that the program is rife with political conflicts.

 

In a legal filing earlier this week, the EPA cited PPT’s ethics complaint regarding the possible conflicts of interest around the involvement of David Hayes in the greendoggle. Hayes is a former White House official who worked on climate programs in the IRA then left government to re-join the board of the Coalition for Green Capital just as it was receiving $5 billion from the GGRF. Coincidentally, his colleague both in the White House climate office and in his first stint at CGC, became EPA’s director of the GGRF.

“We’ve been warning about the potential for abuse associated with the GGRF for quite some time,” PPT Director Michael Chamberlain said. “Each new revelation about the program adds more evidence that our skepticism was right on target. With the work of Administrator Zeldin and his team, we may finally get to the bottom of it.”

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