Electric Vehicle Troubles Mount
Biden, Seniors, EVs, and Battleground Polling
In spite of severe cold and blizzard-like conditions throughout much of America recently, the climate alarmist Left constantly lectures us that ‘weather is not climate’ and similar drivel. Putting aside the clear scientific folly of climate hysteria, consider the practicality and politics of the Green New Deal agenda that Biden and his allies pursue so recklessly right now.
Biden, Schumer et al passed the badly misnamed Inflation Reduction Act boondoggle legislation, with plenty of help from complicit DC Establishment Republicans. Buried within that legislation, among the “healthcare” provisions, were massive subsidies for electric vehicles.
As I described in my recent Newsweek article, the Biden IRA:
“’saved’ approximately $280 billion, mostly by compelling pharmaceutical firms to accept much lower Medicare reimbursements. But did the actual benefits of this reform flow to seniors? Did medical care improve materially, or Medicare premiums and drug costs for seniors get more affordable? The awful truth is that almost all of the savings were used to subsidize Biden's climate alarmism.”
But don’t take my word for it. The brutal numbers were detailed by the Wall Street Journal: “Medicare will keep only about 15% of the savings.”
Where did the other 85% flow?
To Biden’s eco-radicalism broadly, and the Electric Vehicle subsidies particularly. Those direct welfare subsidy payments flow overwhelmingly to well-to-do EV buyers who do not need assistance, even while seniors struggle with the inflation of Bidenomics and Medicare prescription costs rising at a torrid +21% clip for this year.
My advocacy organization, the League of American Workers, polled battleground state voters on this exact issue, and found that an overwhelming majority of Americans oppose the Biden administration's transfer and subsidy. Specifically, our Georgia survey of 600 likely voters found that only 11 percent of respondents called this Medicare savings shift a "good idea," and an overwhelming 78 percent opposed it. Even among self-described liberals in Georgia, only 22 percent supported the policy.
Against this backdrop, consider three new headlines regarding EVs that make this obsession with Green New Deal giveaways even more ridiculous:
1. Hertz Sells EV Fleet – Hertz rental car announced the sale of a whopping 20,000 Electric Vehicles. Bloomberg reported that Hertz will instead “reinvest in gas-powered cars due to weak demand and high repair costs for its battery-powered options.” Hmmm? Apparently, car renters did not get the AOC memo on EVs?
2. EV Struggles During Severe Cold – In blizzard-afflicted Chicago, local Fox television detailed how “public charging stations have turned into car graveyards over the past couple of days,” explaining that “all EVs can have problems dealing with extreme cold.” Further north in chilly Eau Claire, Wisconsin, a local Ford dealer explained that he only sells one EV for every 100 gasoline cars, in large part because “battery-powered vehicles lose up to 40% of their range in the cold.” Notably, EVs show similar performance problems in severe heat, as well.
3. EV Government Cheating Scandal -- circling back to Washington DC (remember, “circle back Jen Psaki at the White House podium?), two former Department of Justice attorneys detailed in the Wall Street Journal how the EV manufacturers blatantly lie, with government approval, to receive billions of dollars in additional payments from taxpayers.
The lawyers, Michael Buschbacher and James Conde, explain that: “under an Energy Department rule, carmakers can arbitrarily multiply the efficiency of electric cars by 6.67…[but] that number has no basis in reality or law.” And…here’s the payoff: “for exaggerating electric-car efficiency, the government rewards carmakers with compliance credits they can trade for cash. Economists estimate these credits could be worth billions.”
Time for America to end this nonsense. Electric vehicles may, in fact, be the standard cars of the future. But giant subsidies and forced conversions now only waste resources and cause unnecessary aggravation.
Time to stop these exorbitantly expensive boondoggles that have nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with cronyism and lefty narrative.