Tag Archives: climate bill

The New Definition Of Low Income

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On Wednesday, The Daily Caller posted an article about the Biden administration’s continuing push to convince Americans that electric vehicles are a good idea. The mental and verbal gymnastics in this effort are becoming comical.

The headline of the article reads:

Biden Admin Classifies Martha’s Vineyard, Elite Locales As ‘Low-Income’ To Push EV Charger Subsidies

The article reports:

The Biden administration is classifying some of the country’s most elite and exclusive locales as “low-income” areas, making them eligible for electric vehicle (EV) charger subsidy programs.

The administration’s EV charger tax credit program — made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), President Joe Biden’s signature climate bill — is specifically designed to route subsidies to “low-income” or “non-urban” areas of the country. The “low-income” emphasis for eligibility aligns in spirit with the Biden administration’s wider pursuit of so-called “environmental justice,” which is effectively the combination of social justice ideology and green policy.

Numerous elite hangouts and locales — including Montauk and Fishers Island in New York, and parts of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket in Massachusetts — are among the areas that the administration has classified as “low-income” and eligible for receipt of EV charger subsidies, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation analysis of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) interactive eligibility map.

Building out a nationwide charging network is a key supporting plank of the Biden administration’s EV agenda, but the charging infrastructure that currently exists is concentrated in wealthier, more densely-populated coastal regions of the country. The Biden administration’s tax credit program is designed to blunt the costs of charger construction specifically in non-urban, less wealthy parts of the country that would be less likely to install them.

“This tax credit provides up to 30% off the cost of the charger to individuals and businesses in low-income communities and non-urban areas, making it more affordable to install EV charging infrastructure and increasing access to EV charging in underserved communities,” the White House stated on Jan. 19.

To meet the “low-income” definition, a given Census tract must have a poverty rate of 20% or more. Alternatively, an area can qualify if the median family income is below 80% of the median family income in the wider metropolitan area or in its state if a given Census tract is not part of any particular metropolitan area, according to section 45D(e) of the Internal Revenue Code.

In practice, however, the latter definition for a “low-income” area enables places that may not be colloquially considered “low-income” to qualify for the credit by virtue of being located in a wealthy state or metropolitan area.

Some of these ‘low-income’ areas include homes worth over a million dollars. Unfortunately, this is simply another example of the Biden administration paying off its wealthy donors.

Please follow the link to the article for further details. Many of us would love to live in some of the low-income areas that are getting the tax credits.

Good News?

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I was very unhappy when Senator Manchin signed on to the Inflation Recovery Act. I was not necessarily surprised, as he has caved in the past when his vote was critical. However, it seems as if there might be a silver lining to this atrocious bill. Please follow the link to the bill to read the Associated Press’ comments on the legislation.

On Sunday, Hot Air reported the following:

Some of the Democrats who have been spiking the ball in the end zone after the passage of the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” probably didn’t read all of the finer details in the bill. They’ve been celebrating its passage along with Joe Biden as the “biggest climate legislation” to ever be passed. They have also been grudgingly thanking West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin for getting the bill over the finish line. But it turns out that Manchin snuck in a few items that haven’t drawn many headlines yet and the climate warriors aren’t going to be very happy about them. While there were billions of dollars for wind and solar energy incentives in the bill, there were also provisions to bolster the oil and gas industry and keep it viable for quite some time to come. And previously stalled permits for drilling both on federal lands and offshore are about to be back on track. (Associated Press)

The article notes:

The most amusing part of this story is perhaps not the underlying news about new oil and gas leases, but the language the AP reporter chose to employ. After the CBO report came out, along with multiple analyses from economists, they’ve basically given up on calling the recent legislation the “Inflation Reduction Act.” In the title of the article, they simply call it the “climate bill.” They then go on to call it the “climate measure.” You have to dig down to the third paragraph before they bother mentioning the actual name of the bill as it was crafted.

The article concludes:

The oil and gas industry clearly saw this coming and they had been preparing. Despite the CEO of Chevron predicting earlier this year that no new oil refineries might ever be built in the United States again thanks to Joe Biden, we learned in recent weeks that Meridian Energy Group has received approval and is moving forward on construction of a new refinery in North Dakota. Two other previously shuttered refineries are undergoing refurbishment and will reopen later this year.

Don’t get me wrong, here. There are still plenty of awful things in this “climate bill.” But these additions lashing renewables and fossil fuels together have at least brought us a few significant steps closer to the “all of the above” energy policy that America needs to survive into the next century.

There may actually be a silver lining to this monstrosity.