Fiscal Cliff Deal Contained $12 Billion For Continuing Wind Subsidies

You wouldn’t think that a bill which was supposedly about fixing the nation’s fiscal problems would be porked up with handouts for special interests, but you’d be wrong. The “fiscal cliff” deal was chock full of goodies, including $12 billion in continues subsidies for Big Wind:

Among the leaders in this glorious formation are companies that will receive a tax credit valued about $12 billion for beginning construction of wind farms sometime in 2013. Texas, the leading wind power-producing state in the nation, will be the chief beneficiary of the 2.2 cents-a-kilowatt-hour of projected energy production tax credit, Bloomberg is reporting.

As Texas Watchdog has reported, the entire wind power industry in Texas had for months been cowering in fear that Congress would fail to extend a tax credit crucial to its life-support for 20 years.

Just how crucial? Bloomberg says the tax credit uncertainty alone caused projections of putting wind turbines online in 2013 to drop to 4,800 megawatts of power from 11,800 megawatts estimated in 2012.

That last ought to tell us something. After years and years of subsidizing wind power, the industry cannot exist without the subsidy.

Which is the case with most things the government subsidizes. Things that work don’t need subsidies. Things that don’t work – and remember that wind power is horribly expensive and extremely unreliable – have to be subsidized.

So the question is, why should the taxpayers be asked to subsidize things that don’t work? Especially when the government is, you know, broke?