Editorial: Energy Department playing loose with taxpayer cash

Editorial Board, Las Vegas Review-Journal on Dec 13, 2024

Published in Op Eds

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Nevadans have a familiarity with the Department of Energy’s bureaucratic fumbling. See: Yucca Mountain. A new audit of the agency now provides more fodder for Elon Musk’s cost-cutting initiative.

Last month, the Office of the Inspector General released an Energy Department overview for fiscal 2024. It found $1 billion in wasteful and ineffective spending. That included $814 million in “questioned, unsupported and unresolved costs” and $122 million that could have been “put to better use.”

In addition, the Biden administration and congressional Democrats, in an effort to spread around green handouts to favored special interests, greatly expanded the department’s loan authority from $17.2 billion in 2021 to $400 billion today. “There is no precedent in the department for this level and pace of financing,” auditors note. “Many of these loans are designed to promote innovation by financing projects not otherwise acceptable by private equity investors — projects the markets do not view as acceptable.”

In other words, the federal government is cavalierly risking taxpayer money on unproven and risky initiatives. Remember Solyndra?

Energy Department officials are also playing fast and loose with billions in grants. The audit found that recipients include those that: “(1) have not been thoroughly vetted; (2) are not eligible under grant criteria; (3) have foreign entanglements; or (4) ‘double dip’ from different federal funding sources for the same project. Untested internal controls, lack of funding for oversight, the use of new funding vehicles and insufficient data exacerbate these risks.”

Another $4 billion set aside for “home energy rebate programs” — a slush fund designed to entice American homeowners into purchasing “green” appliances and the like — could be a gold mine for fraudsters thanks to a lack of oversight and a lax application process. The department has since taken “several actions … to improve fraud prevention controls.”

The auditors determined that the agency was failing to properly monitor many subcontractors. “A total of $232.5 million … require further review,” the office concluded. Energy Department officials also paid nearly $7 million to a contractor “for guaranteed energy savings without validating that the energy savings were received.”

Most of this is a drop in the bucket when the country runs $2 trillion annual deficits and struggles with $35 trillion in red ink. But as the late Everett Dirksen said, “A billion here, a billion there and by and by it begins to mount up into money.” Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has a vast landscape to examine. The Department of Energy presents just another fertile field.

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