Tea Party Congress: We Can’t compete with China. Let’s Throw in the Towel
If this were the early part of last century today’s Tea Partiers would be backing the ice industry and their delivery trucks against the infant refrigerator industry. If we don’t create the industry here, we will go from superpower and cultural center to a second tier tired nation of reactionary luddites.
I thought “I apologize to BP” was the bottom, but there just seems to be no lower limit to the abject toadyism of the Tea Party congress around the issue of energy. Make it oil, make it coal, make it dirty, or don’t make it at all, seems to be the motto.
Washington Monthly:
For nearly a year now, President Obama has pushed the line that the United States has to be prepared to “out-innovate, out-build, and out-compete” the rest of the world in the 21st century. Republicans have generally been hostile to such a proposition, largely because innovation and building requires investments they’re unwilling to make.
GOP officials are loath to admit it, but keeping the United States in a global leadership position in areas of technology and innovation simply isn’t a high priority. If Americans fall behind in global competition, for much of the right, it doesn’t much matter — so long as the wealthy aren’t paying more in taxes.
It’s what makes comments like these stand out as noteworthy.
Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL), who chairs an energy and commerce subcommittee on oversight and investigations, originally supported the [Department of Energy’s loan-guarantees program for clean energy] when Congress created it.
Now he says, “I think the administration is putting taxpayers’ money at risk in areas that are not creating jobs.” […]
“We can’t compete with China to make solar panels and wind turbines,” Stearns says.