The Biden administration is so obsessed with making electric vehicles (EVs) work as part of its green agenda that it’s taking money away from seniors — namely, drug savings under Medicare. Unsurprisingly, it has also failed to advertise that fact.
The news of EV and green energy subsidies flew under the radar until a poll conducted in Arizona alerted voters there to the scheme. Fully three-quarters of Arizona voters polled (76 percent) said they didn’t know the Biden administration diverted money from Medicare “savings” to subsidize green projects, and by an 80-10 margin, respondents strongly opposed such a tactic.
The information came from a report by Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), which shows the inaccurately named Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 diverted some $280 billion from Medicare’s prescription drug provisions to green tax credits and other leftist climate initiatives — instead of lowering prescription drug costs for seniors. The ATR report reveals the so-called Inflation Reduction Act as nothing more than a pork-laden payoff to cronies and an effort by the Biden administration to implement the Green New Deal.
EVs have had a rotten track record in recent years. Example after example shows what a terrible investment they are. In Florida, EVs caught fire in the aftermath of flooding from Hurricane Ian in 2022. Several EVs burst into flames and then reignited later. This year, a Tesla lost control and rolled down a boat ramp into the intercoastal waterway — the fire department reportedly had no choice but to let it burn itself out underwater. Fire departments are fully unprepared to deal with the types of fires caused by the interaction of rare-earth elements in EV batteries and exposure to water.
More to the point, EVs also represent a terrible fiscal commitment. One report indicates electric vehicles depreciate in value by roughly 50 percent over the first five years of their lives, significantly more than standard vehicles. This stands to reason, as the batteries are prohibitively expensive to replace and owners can expect to spend more on repairs to EVs than standard gasoline-powered vehicles. That helps to explain why they’re more difficult and more expensive to insure as well.
EVs don’t save the average consumer on refueling costs, either. The equivalent price of “refueling” an EV works out to approximately $17 per “gallon” in a comparable internal combustion engine vehicle. That cost includes tax credits, rebates, subsidies to vehicle manufacturers, and regulations and mandates by various agencies.
EV owners experience the real sensation of “range anxiety,” in which the limited range of a battery charge, combined with a lack of charging station infrastructure outside of major metropolitan areas, leads drivers to wonder if they’ll get stranded somewhere with a dead car. Perhaps this explains why EVs have sat unsold by the thousands at car lots across the nation — not that you’d know it from listening to the corporate media. Holiday commercials continue to encourage viewers to buy that special someone a luxury electric SUV for Christmas, despite increasing reports of malfunctions, expensive repairs, deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and a thorough lack of consumer enthusiasm for these expensive new products.
The massive subsidies the Biden administration pays to the green energy industry overall seem to go into a giant rat hole, which makes using the Medicare drug savings to pay for them all the more insulting. For instance, one California-based luxury EV manufacturer, Lucid, loses $430,000 on each vehicle it sells. Ford also loses thousands on every EV it sells.
Despite all the problems, the Biden administration continues to subsidize the manufacture and sale of EVs to advance its decarbonization and net-zero goals. Green subsidies are far from trivial, with renewable energy receiving about three and a half times as much as the “fossil fuel” industry.
But the Biden administration is more interested in pet projects, unsustainable green schemes, and ideological revenue redistribution than in the core functions of government — and seniors hoping for relief on drug prices get screwed once again.