Five Million Missing Jobs Haunt Obama’s State of the Union Address

In his upcoming State of the Union Address, President Obama will push for more green-jobs subsidies at taxpayer expense in the name of job creation: “With a Solyndra-scandal-be-damned attitude, President Obama is expected to revive his push for new green fuel sources in Tuesday’s State of the Union address, claiming that they will boost jobs.”  But these impractical proposals are haunted by the utter failure of Obama’s existing green-energy programs to produce economically-viable jobs or fuel.

There are only 140,000 jobs in the whole renewable-energy sector, which illustrates the absurdity of Obama’s unrealistic 2008 promise “to create 5 million new green jobs.” Most of America’s existing green jobs predate the Obama Administration, which did not create them: “from 2003-2010, the rate of growth for clean jobs was 3.4 percent.”  By contrast, Obama wiped out 20,000 jobs recently just by blocking the Keystone XL Pipeline, and recent EPA rules will wipe out at least 800,000 more.

More job losses are yet to come: in 2008, President Obama admitted that under his greenhouse gas regulations, people’s utility bills would “skyrocket,” and coal-fired power plants would go “bankrupt.”  That will wipe out vast numbers of jobs in the energy sector.

Far from creating jobs, Obama’s green-energy policies have actually reduced employment in the United States by diverting American dollars to foreign firms.  The Obama Administration used federal green-jobs money to outsource American jobs to countries like China: “Despite all the talk of green jobs, the overwhelming majority of stimulus money spent on wind power has gone to foreign companies, according to a new report by the Investigative Reporting Workshop” at American University.   “79 percent” of all green-jobs funding “went to companies based overseas,” with the largest payment going to a bankrupt Australian company.  “Most of the jobs are going overseas,” said Russ Choma at the Investigative Reporting Workshop.

Meanwhile, America actually lost jobs in wind-manufacturing: “Even with the infusion of so much stimulus money, a recent report by American Wind Energy Association showed a drop in U.S. wind manufacturing jobs last year.”  (CBS News recently reported that there are 11 more companies, in addition to Solyndra, that are embroiled in financial trouble after receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer money; five have already filed for bankruptcy).  Moreover, the EPA’s own internal documents show that the administration’s global warming regulations will result in a massive “loss of steel, paper, aluminum, chemical, and cement manufacturing jobs.”

Obama’s mythical green-jobs are like other imaginary jobs he claimed to have created with the $800 billion stimulus package.  The Obama Administration took credit for jobs created in 440 non-existent Congressional districts, such as Arizona’s 15th and 86th districts (Arizona only had 8 Congressional districts, as ABC News noted with amusement).  The Washington Examiner noted that at least “75,000 jobs” Obama has claimed credit for are “clearly imaginary” or “highly doubtful.” Readers can view its interactive map of “Inflated Jobs by State.”

The Obama Administration claimed that the stimulus package would keep unemployment from ever rising above 8 percent, but it peaked at over 10 percent.  Obama claimed the stimulus was needed to prevent an “irreversible decline,” but the Congressional Budget Office admits that the stimulus package will shrink the economy “in the long run.”

Obama’s green-jobs pledge isn’t his only broken promise.  Obama campaigned in 2008 on a promise of a “net spending cut,” but soon after taking office, he proposed budgets that would add $4.8 trillion to the national debt.