As the US becomes increasingly involved in conflicts around the world, President Biden is using a wartime law to spend American tax dollars on the production of electric heat pumps as an alternative to gas furnaces. In a joint presser with the White House, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced the “historic” $169 million funding award for this purpose. The Defense Production Act cited as justification is, according to FEMA, “the primary source of presidential authorities to expedite and expand the supply of materials and services from the U.S. industrial base needed to promote the national defense.” Is this stretching that definition a bit? Perhaps – but that’s nothing new for this president.
The War on Gas
America is apparently at war, with an enemy unlike any we’ve faced before. Not terrorists in the Middle East nor European tyrants bent on global domination – not even pirates in Africa, cartels south of the border, or a freak pandemic from China – no, the foe that so threatens US national defense that the president feels empowered to buy out private sector industry with tax dollars is climate change brought about by the consumption of fossil fuels. That’s right, we’re our own worst enemy – but the Biden administration claims it has the solution.
(Photo by Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)
Whether it’s offering funding and tax credits for electric vehicles, trying to ban gas stoves, or in this case paying to flood the market with electric heat pumps, the Biden administration has effectively declared war on gas.
The $169 million Biden authorized for the latest batch of electric heat pumps simply adds to the billions already spent on electric vehicles and the infrastructure necessary for them: “$7.5 billion in EV charging, $10 billion in clean transportation, and over $7 billion in EV battery components, critical minerals, and materials” according to the White House in February, and another $15.5 billion announced in August to “support a strong and just transition to electric vehicles, retooling existing plants, and rehiring existing workers.” That’s more than twice what the president requested in aid to Israel and fast approaching the level of aid earmarked for Ukraine in 2023.
No Stranger to the Stretch
Is it a stretch to say that the use of gas stoves, furnaces, and cars are a threat to national security? Sure – but that never stopped Biden before, so why should it now? Remember the administration’s vaccine mandates? A federal judge in Texas ruled last year that government employees can’t be fired for not getting vaccinated, OSHA finally gave up on the president’s plan to require the jab for any employee working at a company with 100 or more workers, and a year later Congress killed the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for the military.
The Biden campaign in 2020 tried to spin the right to keep and bear arms as a public health crisis – complete with a “Plan to End Our Gun Violence Epidemic.” The fall of Roe v. Wade and the increase in abortion bans was spun as a public health crisis as well.
The Biden White House worked closely with social media companies to censor free speech regarding the Coronavirus pandemic and, more recently, the president lost one court battle over that censorship and another over the administration’s meddling with border barriers installed by the state of Texas. If there’s one thing Biden has proven multiple times over, it’s that he’s willing to stretch the law to the limit and beyond, latching on to any connection, no matter how tenuous. He wins some and he loses some, but it just goes to show that, in practice, the president can do whatever he wants so long as it can be pegged even tangentially to the law – and it falls to Congress and the courts to prove him wrong.
