The Washington Times
On Friday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee delivered a subpoena to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) ordering the disclosure of documents related to the $535 million loan guarantee the Department of Energy gave to Solyndra Inc. This firm has been dear to Democratic luminaries, from Energy Secretary Stephen Chu to the president himself…
The committee’s oversight staff has also turned the spotlight on Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) funding of 320 programs that dole out nearly $100 million in U.S. taxpayer cash to stimulate economies overseas. The Chinese government pocketed $718,000 from taxpayers in a grant supposedly to help the Middle Kingdom meet international air-quality emissions targets. Thailand’s government was handed $700,000 to harness the power of pig flatulence as “renewable energy.” The EPA gave Interpol $150,000 to prop up a program to detect “fraud” in Europe’s carbon-trading markets, which were specifically designed to make global warming hysteria profitable. The United Nations took home $1,226,841 to browbeat Third World countries into pumping pointless ethanol into their gas tanks.
After making deeper inquiries, the staff found a public-relations campaign known as “Breathe Easy, Jakarta” had been listed as costing $15,000. The EPA’s actual expenditures on this project will total $1.5 million. The Obama administration’s outrageous spending at home is bad enough. There’s no reason to spend millions exporting American bureaucracy to countries that are better off without it.
