Kansas Republican Rep. Mike Pompeo joined 54 other House members in calling a wind energy subsidy cronyism and demanding it be allowed to expire, The Hill reports.
Pompeo’s move represents another pushback to the Obama administration’s list of priorities, as the administration has been heavily involved in advocating for green energy technologies. The Wind Production Tax Credit (PTC) is one such policy.
“Proponents of the wind PTC continue to call for an extension despite growing evidence that this subsidy has not only cost taxpayers billions, but has caused significant price distortions in wholesale electricity markets,” the letter signed by the Republican legislators stated.
“We offer our full support of the current process undertaken by the House Committee on Ways and Means that will allow the most anti-competitive and economically harmful tax provisions, specifically the wind energy production tax credit (PTC), to expire,” the letter stated. “Ensuring that our nation’s patchwork tax code undergoes significant reform is a noble goal and, as part of this process, we believe Congress should stop picking winners and losers and finally end the wind PTC,” the letter continued.
The letter called upon House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp of Michigan to simply let the tax credit expire, arguing that if the credit is ended now, there will already have been a generous phase-out period for a technology that should now be able to stand on its own two legs.
“Wind power is substantially more expensive than conventional power and subsidizing inefficient highly expensive electricity punishes the U.S. economy and lowers living standards. Also, wind power advocates often claim that wind power is cost competitive with conventional power, but if that were the case, they certainly would have no reason to be requesting preferential subsidies,” James Taylor, senior fellow for environmental policy at the Heartland Institute, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
“We often hear from the renewable energy folks that fossil fuels get more subsidies than they do, but according to the Government Accountability Office, the Congressional Budget Office, and the Energy Information Administration, renewable energy receives more than twice the amount of preferential subsidies that traditional fuels do,” Taylor added.
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