Milton Friedman quipped that "nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program."

How true that is. 

Even with DOGE trying to slash every bit of waste in government--good luck with that!--the RINOs in Congress are beginning to fight back because, well, spending in their districts. 

I have been muttering to my wife that Republicans will start whining about cuts to their local colleges and universities--government subsidizes higher education to a ridiculous extent and these institutions employ a lot of well-paid but useless bureaucrats who are very politically engaged because they have nothing else to do--but I should have expected that all the stupid tax credits for stupid projects would get the same treatment. 

Well, it's happening where you least expect it. At least 20 Republicans are pushing back against cuts to Joe Biden's Clean Energy Tax Credits because money. 

House Republican support grows for keeping clean energy tax breaks

— politico (@politico) Mar 10, 2025

Money money money. It doesn't matter that the money is wasted. It doesn't matter that the money spent here will cost taxpayers twice or three times as much in energy costs, or that many of the "jobs" created will disappear as these fake companies go bankrupt once the subsidies fade away. It certainly doesn't matter that this money is debt that will destroy our economy. 

It's free money, and those Republicans want their cut, and are pushing back. 

A growing number of House Republicans are urging the party to preserve the clean energy tax credits in Democrats’ climate law — and warning they may oppose the party’s budget bill if those incentives get axed.

In a letter shared exclusively with POLITICO, 21 House Republicans — whose districts have drawn billions in new investments because of the Inflation Reduction Act incentives — said developing clean energy was critical for the U.S. to meet President Donald Trump’s goal of becoming “energy dominant.” And they threatened to resist their colleagues’ efforts to gut the law to help pay for a small fraction of the GOP’s multi-trillion-dollar tax-cut package.

“We have 20-plus members saying, ‘Don’t just think you can repeal these things and have our support,’” said Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.), who organized the letter.

The growing pushback against eliminating the IRA’s hundreds of billions of dollars in tax credits and other incentives — which have largely benefited GOP-controlled districts — will complicate efforts by House Republicans to slash federal outlays without shrinking Medicaid spending as they seek to offset the tax cuts in their budget bill.

“We need the projects that are currently under development to be brought online so we can continue the President’s ‘America First’ agenda,” added Garbarino, who previously led a letter last fall with 17 other Republicans urging leadership not to gut the credits. “These [credits] are helping the president accomplish what he said he wanted to do in his campaign, and that was to make America an energy dominant country.”

Green jobs! MAGA needs green jobs! Our energy future will be powered by the next Solyndra! 

Money money money. 

Thus it always is in politics. One man's waste is another's pork-barrel spending that makes the difference between reelection and defeat. 

This is how great empires fall. Corruption, graft, vote buying, and an unwillingness to see beyond the tip of one's nose or with a time horizon longer than two years. 

I am not naive enough to believe that deals should never be cut, or that taking an 80% win is a defeat. You should strive to get the best outcome and live with the fact that the world is not perfect. 

But c'mon, man, we are talking about THE INFLATION REDUCTION ACT, which is basically the Green Nude Eel. These jobs are fake, the "energy" produced is extremely costly once you factor in the backup power and lifetime costs. America needs to focus on new nuclear plants and expanding our extraction of oil and gas. Green energy subsidies are a huge net loss to our country. 

But as with biofuel subsidies, it all depends on whose ox is gored. 

Garbarino, who is co-chair of the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus, said he and his fellow Republicans are releasing their letter addressed to Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) ahead of those meetings to help inform their work.

In the new letter, which the Republicans framed to appeal to Trump, the lawmakers warn that repealing certain tax credits “would increase utility bills the very next day.” They said the incentives are helping to boost manufacturing and energy production that will help meet the growing power demand from a fleet of planned artificial intelligence data centers.

They note that “many credits were enacted over the course of a ten-year period, which allowed energy developers to plan with these tax incentives in mind.”

That means that even if Republicans stop short of a full repeal, and instead choose to phase out credits or otherwise restrict them to reduce their cost, there would be consequences for electricity ratepayers, the lawmakers said.

“Full repeal right now of energy tax credits would be a disaster for what companies have paid for, for what we’ve already invested in with taxpayer dollars,” Garbarino said, adding that he’s spoken several times to Smith. “Even starting to phase them out would end up making a project moot.”

Is it possible that jobs will be lost and that some will lose money?

Not just possible, but inevitable. But these projects are a huge drag on our economy, are borrowing from Peter's children to pay Paul, and along with all the other ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY NECESSARY programs are bankrupting our country. 

Lots of jobs will be lost if we go into a debt-driven depression. 

But so it goes in late-empire politics. It's not like politics is ever divorced from graft and self-dealing, but in wealthy societies the fear of bad consequences diminishes and the scale of the graft becomes enormous and threatening to society. The building of the Transcontinental rail lines was an enormous source of corruption and graft, but relative to our growth prospects, the sum total of all the corruption in the federal government, the scale was small compared to now. 

And the railroad actually did spur economic growth. Green energy subsidies will not. 

We simply can't afford to keep pouring money into useless and expensive projects. What are we, Californians dreaming about high speed rail?