By David Wojick |July 30th, 2020|Climate|159 Comments
Biden’s multi-trillion dollar climate action plan is full of promises that the law says he cannot keep. Promising to do what you cannot do is a false promise. Here are some big ticket examples.
Biden says “If I am elected I will do the following:
Create millions of good, union jobs rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure from roads and bridges to green spaces and water systems to electricity grids and universal broadband…
Create 1 million new jobs in the American auto industry, domestic auto supply chains, and auto infrastructure, from parts to materials to electric vehicle charging stations…
Provide every American city with 100,000 or more residents with high-quality, zero-emissions public transportation options through flexible federal investments with strong labor protections that create good, union jobs and meet the needs of these cities…”
What is wrong with these grand promises? Simple. The President of the United States has no authority, or the money, to do any of these things. That authority (and money) belongs solely to the U.S. Congress. So here is what these promises really amount to.
Biden really says “If elected I promise to do the following:
Beg Congress to do something about America’s crumbling infrastructure. I will propose a big plan but what they do is up to them.
Implore Congress to somehow create a lot of jobs in the American auto industry. How they do it is up to them.
Repeatedly ask Congress to build a lot of zero-emissions public transit stuff. I will bug the hell out of them. (What they do is up to them.)”
Not quite so grand sounding, are they? In fact they are pretty humble, because Congress, not the President, runs the U.S. Government. That who is President is all important is just a myth, albeit a seemingly universal myth.
Nor is the Congress likely to do much of this hugely expensive stuff, even if the Democrats win both houses, which is also unlikely. Unlikely + unlikely = very unlikely. This is especially true because Biden’s undocumented cost estimate of two trillion dollars is way low. It is more like twenty trillion.
It would require trillions of dollars in new taxes, which is political suicide, especially in the House where every seat is voted on every two years. The symbolic House Climate Crisis Committee put out an even grander plan than Biden’s, but like the toothless Committee that plan is just symbolic.
Note by the way that there is no mention of all these jobs being union in the real promises. Even Congress cannot make that happen. There are “Buy American” clauses in Federal contracts, but no “Only Unions Shops Can Bid On This” clauses. That would be truly unconstitutional.
It has been suggested that all this pro-union rhetoric is to make up for Biden’s unacceptably truthful admission that killing the fossil fuel industry would kill hundreds of thousands of jobs. Or it may be because AOC, who is hot on unions, is his top climate plan planner. In any case it is yet another false promise.
People running for President should only promise to do what Presidents can actually do. They cannot speak for Congress so should not pretend to. Biden’s climate promises are so false they are absurd. You can’t get there from here.
Author
David Wojick, Ph.D. is an independent analyst working at the intersection of science, technology and policy. For origins see http://www.stemed.info/engineer_tackles_confusion.html For over 100 prior articles for CFACT see http://www.cfact.org/author/david-wojick-ph-d/ Available for confidential research and consulting.
Nearly every candidate for every office at every level makes promises similarly phrased, falsity notwithstanding. It is a rare politician who is willing to phrase campaign promises as “I will advocate for…” instead of flatly “I will…”. Only those of us who serve or have served in legislative minorities really get used to doing that.
He articulated a major failing of Barack Obama and his 8 years in Office. BOb passed a 1.3 Trillion Dollar Stimulus Bill that was going to fund “Shovel Ready” infrastructure jobs to rebuild our roads and bridges.
Bidens First Order of Business:
Create millions of good, union jobs rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure from roads and bridges to green spaces and water systems to electricity grids and universal broadband…
Not only does have not have the authority with a sweep of the pen to rebuild crumbling infrastructure he was suppose to have done that between 2012 and 2016. They wasted 1.3 Trillion of future taxpayers of American money (in the form of debt) and literally no infrasturcture was built or repaired.
I do know that $20 Billion of that stimulus money to fix roads and bridges went to shore up the Maryland State Teachers Union Pension fund which was underwater. It would be interesting to discover how many other State government employees union funds the stimulus spending stimulated.
Why “union”? If you possess the absolute power you believe that you will have, then your pronouncements on day one will obviate their forward-looking viability. Abort them and redistribute their profitable parts. So Pro-Choice.
“…It has been suggested that all this pro-union rhetoric is to make up for Biden’s unacceptably truthful admission that killing the fossil fuel industry would kill hundreds of thousands of jobs. Or it may be because AOC, who is hot on unions, is his top climate plan planner. In any case it is yet another false promise….”
Congresswoman AOC introduces an amendment in the House which will prohibit most new fossil fuel energy pipelines and other projects. Has the fossil fuel industry on edge…
https://www.eenews.net/stories/1063640717
These people are nuts. They’ll do it IF they control Congress. At this point, it looks like they WILL get control of the Senate although it will most likely be 50-50 if not 51-49. Would Joe Manchin vote to kill his state? If not, then 50-50 control wouldn’t be enough. 51 is very possible though. It comes down to Iowa and Montana, where Democrats have polled higher than the incumbent Republican but NOT close to 50%. I’d assume that they fail to win both at the end of the day, but it’s possible that they won’t.
What happened to all the jobs renewable energy was supposed to spawn in the past 20 years? Installation of roof top panels saw small companies come and go by the dozens. Manufacturing went to China for panels and Europe for wind turbines. All Bush and Obama did was gut our economy and raise energy prices when it came to the renewable dream.
It wasn’t until the Democrats and Pelosi took over the House in 2006 that things went sour. Up until then it was pretty good. Bush’s fault was trying to work with the Dems and compromise but they ended up sticking it right up his behind and then blamed it all on him. That is why Trump will not work with them or sit back and take their verbal assaults.
Bush was intellectually mediocre, hence his inability not to “work” with them. His legacy is rubble. He has enjoyed his time of higher favorability among Democrats while he trashes his former party, but that’s a house of cards. His favorability will be zip in be future because he’ll have none among Republicans and none among Democrats when he’s politically useless five years from now. What a pitiful end of that political family. Don’t expect to see him ever again at any future GOP national conventions.
The amazing thing is that Biden is falling back on the “I can’t tell you any details because there are none” promises that this career politician has been making all his life. And dumbass people still fall for it.
He really only should promise that he’ll compost his adult diapers, assuming that he is so inclined. I guess it depends.
Broadband? I think there are only a few remote places in some odd place like Minnesota’s wilderness areas that won’t have broadband available. Maybe some remote spot in the Aleutian chain is not using it, or a few lost souls who’ve given up creature comforts to be Hibernators.
This ain’t the 1990s, y’know. But more important: does Biden know that?
(If you think I”m serious, you’re as out of touch as he is.)
Can you say Starlink? Everyone in North American will have broadband. The more remote they are, the better it’s supposed to be.
OH, no, I have NOT forgotten Starlink. We go to see the dispersal of that, remember? Almost looked like geese in training flights for the fall trip south.
I didn’t vote for many years because I couldn’t tell when a politician was telling the truth. While it seemed like the Republicans were better than the Democrats, I still saw far too many Republicans do things that were far different than what they said when they were running for office. Finally after getting a copy of the federalist papers by Charles R. Kesler, I determined the best person to vote for would be the one who’s words were the closest to the idea behind the constitution. It was pretty much a draw in the last election so I had to go with the one who would select Supreme Court judges that were the most true to the constitution. I had to hold my nose when I voted but it was the best I could do.
I think things really started falling apart when we depended on the primary system to select who we wanted for office. The smoke filled rooms knew that they needed to select somebody who could run the government and get the public vote. If they failed at this task, they knew they would be on the sideline until the next election and putting somebody in office was their only reason for being.
Remember that our government is a Republic and a Republic is constructed to keep power from being concentrated in one group’s hands. The worst of all places for the power to be concentrated is in the hands of the people because before long they will figure out how to take from others which would be the end of business and the end of the country. No country can survive for long without health business as that is where all wealth originates.
I understand your thinking, however, I’ve always thought it logical to vote for the lesser of two evils that can win.
Basing the act of voting upon a politician telling the truth seems either overly naive or overly moralistic. No offense, I don’t have a problem with anyone demanding politicians tell the truth. But demanding it versus making it a requirement for voting are two different things.
But you just said a politician’s words couldn’t be trusted.
🙂
Just remember…. The DONALD is not a politician,he is a regular person Sleepy Joe is a politician and with More than 30 year practice at sweet smelling bulls..t
Trump’s biggest problem is that he occasionally tells the truth which gets ALL of them riled.
It’s hard to deal with reality inside the Beltway.
The way you know they are telling some of the truth is they are pushing Constitutional ideas instead of bribing voters with government handouts paid for by the rich. You don’t buy votes by promising voters by giving them nothing other than their freedom which they already have. Remember the scariest words are I am from the government and I am here to help you. Ronald Reagan.
Touché!
What? A politician making promises he knows he can’t keep?
How unusual.
A politician makes false promises!
Gasp! Shock! Headline news!
He’s got the American Wind Energy Association quite optimistic.
https://www.evwind.es/2020/07/14/american-wind-energy-association-statement-on-biden-climate-plan/75750
Ahhhhh – The breaking Wind news…..
How apropos.
This article had a good point – a dozen or so years ago. President Biden (or, rather, whoever has actually been chosen to be President after the inauguration) will certainly be a rabid Leftist. Laws? What is this thing called “laws”?
Well, we don’t elect politicians for what they can do but for what they want to do. Donald Trump was elected because he wanted to do a lot of stuff that people who voted for him wanted him to do. (Build the wall, etc.) What a politician wants to do is mostly just aspiration, but you can reasonably extrapolate much of what he will do from what he wants to do.
The problem is the things he wants to do that he doesn’t tell you about when he’s campaigning. George W. Bush wanted to invade the Middle East and force democratization on countries in it, starting with Iraq. He wanted to wage war and, when he got the chance, he did, but he kept that aspiration a secret from the electorate when he campaigned in 2000. Now that was bad. Much worse than Donald Trump has managed so far.
Total crap. And I’m being polite.
Jim
Biden and Hillary share a common trait in that there is no lie too big for them to tell on the campaign trail.
Neither Biden or Hillary ever achieved anything positive for mankind.
Careers without achievements that enabled and strengthened their lying. Why bother to even try and tell a truth?
Both politicians feared inconvenient questions from knowledgeable persons.
Lately though, Biden forgets everything. Without a teleprompter he has trouble telling coherent lies.
YEP!!!!!!!
My new favorite (nonsense) Biden quote is “We want truth over facts.”
Tonight on Watters’ World, they caught Biden saying this: “The 2020 census is two censuses ago.” Huh? What complete stupidity!
Jim
He also promises to declare a “Climate Emergency” on Day One.
I was looking for that in the Constitution, and I couldn’t find it or any authority it gives him, except to faithfully execute existing laws.
The “Climate Emergency” will then allow a Declaration of War on Climate Change which means more money for the military, 3 letter spook agencies, etc.
“Create millions of good, union jobs rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure from roads and bridges to green spaces and water systems to electricity grids and universal broadband…”
Leave it to the Democrats to think the federal government takes care of all this. Water systems? How many water systems has the federal government built in America? Answer – ZERO. Water systems are usually built with local or county bond issues. The feds may “guarantee” some loans taken out by the local and county governments in the private market but those are only *guarantees” if the government entity fails to pay off the loan. How often has that happened?
It’s the same for roads and bridges. Almost all roads and bridges in this country were built by local, county, or state government, not the feds. The *worst* crumbling roads and bridges are city streets and city bridges. It’s not the federal governments responsibility to pay for the upkeep on that infrastructure.
Part of the reason for our large national debt, which will someday lead us into bankruptcy just like Greece, is the meme fomented by the Democrats for the past 100 years that the federal government is responsible for *everything* in the nation. It’s a meme we can’t afford any longer.
Here in the west, the federal government put up Hover, Roosevelt and many other dams where much of our water comes from. Fortunately they were well constructed and may last another hundred years. You are correct that once it gets out of the river bed, the water is distributed independent of the federal government. In Arizona it’s the Salt River project. Power in Arizona is provide by the Salt River project south of the Salt river and by Arizona Public service north of the Salt river. While the State government oversees both, they operate independent of the government.
With the exception of Hover dam which has been overdrawn, we have had a pretty good year for water. We draw from ground water and Horse Shoe dam is the first emptied as it’s a wild life preserve. This is the status of our system. Note that dams are listed from highest elevation to lowest in the order they are connected and the Verde merges in to the Salt River https://streamflow.watershedconnection.com/Dwr
And, David, don’t forget the bigger fib – calling expenditure ‘government spending’ instead of the truthful ‘spending taxpayer’s money’.
From an outsiders perspective I can’t believe that the most powerful country on Earth could possibly end up having a President with dementia.
The man is lead everywhere by the hand like a small child for fear that he might just wander off for pete’s sake.
Climate Believer wait wait. He has a son who needs more millions to feed his habitats.
I thought they already had one?
Here’s what’s funny about that.
He’s whoopin’ progressives and Democrats up, down and sideways like red-headed stepchildren, as well as some in his own party. The full faith and power of the United Bureaucrats of Obama plus some help from you Yanks couldn’t bring him down.
That’s gotta hurt getting your face slapped on both sides like that every day. He leads liberals around like cattle, living in their pointed heads rent free.
Yeah, sure he’s got dementia.
I tell ya, it’s a FANTASTIC spectacle to watch. Who’d a thunk it?
If you say so.
Looks a little different from across the Atlantic
“Looks a little different from across the Atlantic”
Well, it depends on what you are looking at. The Guardian?
You’ll be better served in the long run by relying on reality rather than optics.
Good article but …
Lets not forget that Trump promised more than any other candidate ever promised, in at least 50 years, and did not keep most of the promises.
I judge a politician by what they do – what they say is platitudes and empty promises — I take notice only if the promise is negative, such as the Green New Ordeal.
I guess he could brag about the stock market but real unemployment is 20 percent now with 32 million collecting unemployment compensation of a 160 million labor force.
Trump can claim, however, he always knows what state he is in.
That’s very important for a president.
Also, a good slogan such as
A chicken in every pot and
pot in every chicken.
But he tried to do what he said he’d do.
He was stopped mostly by Dems and RINOs.
“Good article but …
Lets not forget that Trump promised more than any other candidate ever promised, in at least 50 years, and did not keep most of the promises.”
I’m wondering what you are referring to. Could you give some examples of promises not kept by Trump?
What was unemployment BEFORE all the virus-related lockdowns? You really think it would have been better now under ANYONE else?
The biggest lie of all: I will change how much CO2 is in the atmosphere (in the foot steps of his ex boss).
https://edberry.com/blog/climate-physics/agw-hypothesis/human-co2-emissions-have-little-effect-on-atmospheric-co2-discussion/
https://edberry.com/blog/climate-physics/agw-hypothesis/what-is-really-behind-the-increase-in-atmospheric-co2/
Why “good union jobs”? Are unions the only good jobs out there? What about the massive amount of workers that have no union? Are they now “non-essential” because they aren’t viewed as “good union jobs”? Oh yes, I went there.
I work in an industry that used to be predominantly unionized, my company stayed out of the union and has to this day with a mark of pride. And in so doing, while unions bickered and shook down business owners, the company was able to sweep in better contracts with better conditions for it’s workers and grew like mad because of it.
Just because it says “union” does not mean it is doing what is best for the people in it. I’ve had to join 2 unions in my working career–both of them were corrupt, didn’t do a thing for anyone and spent most of the money I was forced to give them on political ads for whatever candidate backed whatever they wanted. That is a slice of the union pie I experienced.
“Why “good union jobs”? Are unions the only good jobs out there?”
Yes, they are, as far as the Democrats are concerned. The Unions give the Democrats money, that’s why the Democrats care about unions. And they don’t really care about the union workers, all they really care about are the union bosses, the ones who give them the money.
There are lots of ‘bad union jobs’ but, as long as the corrupt union leaders keep sending their collective union dues to corrupt politicians like Biden bin Hidin his Dem-entia, et.al., the corrupt symbiosis between socialist unions and socialist democrats will continue.
An interesting divergence from this is the increasing number of endorsements President Trump is receiving from police and firefighting unions across the USA. Seems these unions are fed up with the violent terrorist anarchy protesters and their ‘defund the police’ movements abetted by socialist democrats politicians in Seattle WA, Portland OR, NYC, and other major socialist democrat strongholds.
From the article: “Biden says “If I am elected I will do the following:
Create millions of good, union jobs rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure from roads and bridges to green spaces and water systems to electricity grids and universal broadband…”
That’s funny. Biden was in charge of the $800 billion stimulus package put together to help the U.S. out of the last recession. The stimulus package was a huge failure. Remember the “shovel-ready jobs” meme back then? Obama finally had to admit there weren’t that many shovel-ready jobs, and those hundreds of billions of dollars in stimulus just seemed to disappear.
Democrats always want to control the economy. It’s a disaster every time they try. Free Enterprise is the only way to go. The only thing that works.