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BOND UNVEILS “YELLOW LIGHT ON GREEN JOBS” REPORT
New Report Cautions Green Jobs Mean Lower Pay, Taxpayer Subsidies & Lost Jobs
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April 27, 2009
WASHINGTON, DC – With green jobs the focus of the President’s Earth Day event and numerous recent media stories, Senate Green Jobs and the New Economy subcommittee ranking member U.S. Senator Kit Bond today unveiled a new report: Yellow Light on Green Jobs.
“This report signals a yellow light urging caution with green jobs,” said Bond. “We must avoid green jobs proposals that result in killing millions of existing jobs to pay for new green jobs, require expensive taxpayer subsidies, or pay low wages.”
As Ranking Member of this new subcommittee, Senator Bond reviewed green-jobs programs, proposals and reports. The overwhelming source of materials derived from green-jobs advocates, progressive-policy groups, environmental groups and labor organizations. The findings revealed that many green jobs pay low wages, require expensive taxpayer subsidies, and kill existing jobs to pay for new green jobs.
The lessons from Yellow Light on Green Jobs for policymakers include:
· Do not kill existing jobs to create new jobs
· Avoid expensive taxpayer subsidies to pay for green jobs
· Promote only those green jobs that make economic sense
The Yellow Light on Green Jobs report reveals that many green jobs do not offer wages needed to support U.S. families. A coalition of labor and environmental groups found that state and local governments were spending tens of millions of dollars to subsidize only a few hundred green jobs, which were paying as low as $13 to $15 dollars per hour, not much above the federal poverty wage of $10 per hour.
A major example of this dilemma occurred in Newton, Iowa, where President Obama visited on Earth Day to tout green jobs at a new wind turbine plant. During the visit, the President noted that new green jobs replaced manufacturing jobs where a Maytag plant closed. However, he did not mention that only 700 jobs paying $13 per hour replaced the 1,800 jobs paying $20 an hour plus health care. Bond expressed concern that passing climate-change legislation to pay for new green jobs will result in a similar situation where good-paying manufacturing jobs are driven away by the burden of high energy taxes and replaced with fewer, lower-paying green jobs.
Bond’s Yellow Light on Green Jobs report reveals how President Obama and many others are using the prospect of green jobs to push their own agendas, which include more government spending and climate-change legislation that will raise energy prices and kill existing jobs. The report specifically highlights programs such as the New Apollo Program, founded by a coalition of labor and environmental groups, which will cost $500 billion over 10 years. The report also highlights Green Recovery from the progressive policy group Center for American Progress, which will cost $100 billion over 2 years. Ultimately, the report serves as yellow light of caution regarding new climate-change legislation that threatens millions of U.S. jobs, especially in the manufacturing dependent Midwest.
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