5-13-25 - 7am - Department of Energy and Tax Credits on the Chopping Block

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Michael, why are they protesting outside of ice facilities for
criminals and not our own prisons. Well, because the people
protesting are Democrats who don't believe that we should be

(00:20):
detaining illegal aliens. And they don't believe or they.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Do believe illegal alien criminal yes.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
And they also believe incorrectly that in those detention centers
are innocent children snapped off the streets of Newark, or
innocent moms that are just taking their illegal alien children
to school or to the pediatrician, or just shopping for
groceries or whatever. I mean, it's a really twisted view

(00:53):
of what's going on. It's really it's a really sick
kind of perception that they have that even though it
would obviously I'm following on a talk back, which I
try to keep it from.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
Rare, they do, I rarely do.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Let's also not forget it was it last week or
the week before that we're apparently deporting four and six
year olds citizens.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
Yes, just willy nilly. I have read on numerous what
would you call them chat sites like well, like red
it's a good place where you can find these kinds
of conversations where whether you are of a minority, either

(01:40):
based on your sexual preference, or on your ethnicity, or
on your religion, almost any categories you can think of
any sort of you know, identity, politic, vertical that they
would put you in that people are asking questions, should
I be scared? Should I move? Should I leave the country,

(02:01):
should I do anything? I'm not talking about illegal aliens.
I'm talking about American citizens who happen to be let's
just say they're gay Muslims, which would be an interesting contradiction.
But a gay Muslim, a gay black Muslim is asking

(02:22):
on Reddit, should I should I find another country living?
Should I move somewhere? The irrationality of the fear is
being fed by the cabal who wants everyone to believe
that if they don't, if they don't fit, you know,
just the perfect stereotyped middle class white person, that you're

(02:49):
going to be deported or you're going to be jailed.
Are you going to be putting in a detention center?
It is mind boggling stupid to me how Democrats have
no message about the economy, no message about national sovereignty,
no message about you know, trying to fix entitlement programs,

(03:11):
no message about anything in terms of everything that Donald
Trump was elected for. There's no counter argument to any
of those things, other than the one thing I do
here somewhat consistently is, oh, they're going to cut Medicare
and Medicaid, They're going to cut Social Security.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
No.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
The only thing that I've heard that you could, even
with a lot of gymnastics, interpret as being a cut
to medicaid is the idea that if you're not a
citizen of the United States of America, you should not
be receiving Medicaid benefits. That's one of the big battles
going on between the Trump administration and California. It's it's

(03:55):
a battle it should be going on between between the
Trump administration and Colorado. It's probably a battle that should
be going on, although most of the red state governors
would agree with that. But every state's doing it. But
they just I don't, I truly do not understand other
than they were caught off guard and the country has

(04:24):
They thought the country was on the same freight train
that they had everybody on, and we were all headed
toward you know, the train station from Hell, and we
got off that train. There was an interim stop somewhere
and we all got off that and said, no, we're

(04:47):
gonna take this train over here. We're going to go
a different direction. Democrats stayed on that old train, and
they're still bitching and moaning about the same things when
the majority of the country has moved a different direction,
and they have not geared at a way to respond
to that new direction that we're going, other than, of course,
the typical tropes of racism and sexism and you know,

(05:12):
homophobic and transphobic and everything else. It's absolutely bizarre. Anyway,
I'm gonna get I'm gonna go to energy for a
little while. Chris Wright, the Energy secretary that we've had
on this program did an interview with Maria Barbaromo on Friday,
and in that conversation he revealed what should have become
a major scandal left over for him to clean up

(05:36):
by his predecessor, Jennifer Granholme. In the video clip that
you'll hear in just a second right, explains how grand
Home and officials in the Department of Energy's Energy Loans
office triggered a processed last November that wound up looting
the US Treasury for billions of dollars across a mere

(06:00):
seventy six days between election day on November five, and
Trump's inauguration on January twenty. Much of the money flowed
into NGOs that were five oh one c three nonprofit organizations,
some of which were created solely to benefit from the

(06:22):
program that Biden was using to dole out those billions
of dollars. I mean, you just can't make this stuff up.
It's unbelievable.

Speaker 4 (06:32):
A little over forty billion dollars was supplied in support
through the Loan Program Office in its fifteen years of existence,
a little over forty billion, and then almost one hundred
billion in the seventy six days after they lost the election.

Speaker 3 (06:46):
And think about that for a moment.

Speaker 1 (06:49):
Through the life of this program, the creation of the
Department of Energy, forty billion dollars and then in the
last seventy six days one hundred billion dollars.

Speaker 4 (07:01):
A little over forty billion dollars was supplied in support
through the Loan Program Office in its fifteen years of existence,
a little over forty billion, and then almost one hundred
billion in the seventy six days after they lost the
election and before President Trump's inauguration. Like, if those were
great ideas that were benefit to the America, why didn't

(07:22):
they do it in the two and a half years
after the Inflation Reduction Act was passed? Why didn't they
wait till they lost the election? They changed terms and
loan covenants. They basically tried to set bombs to make
it hard for us to unwind the mess they created.
That's just not a responsible way to treat American taxpayer
money and to move our energy system forward. So, yes,

(07:44):
we've stepped into We've stepped into.

Speaker 3 (07:45):
A lot of mess.

Speaker 4 (07:46):
But this stuff's all fixable. We've got an aggressive team
going after it. And you see already American energy prices
are down, in castments in America to bring jobs back
are up.

Speaker 5 (07:57):
So I think we're going the right direction.

Speaker 4 (07:59):
But yeah, we've got a lot to clean out.

Speaker 1 (08:03):
You know how, I much admire Chris Wright, and I
think that he can tackle it. I don't think it's
going to be as easy as he thinks it's going
to be. But they're off to a great start and
they're doing it. The Trump administration has also rolled back
a series of Biden era energy regulations that targeted you

(08:24):
and your appliances in a move that they announced yesterday,
and the estimates are they'll save consumers over eleven billion dollars.
It eliminates some one hundred and twenty five thousand words
from federal regulations. So what happened is the Department of
Energy confirmed the reversal of all these stupid rules that

(08:46):
restricted the sales of certain gas stoves, ovens, dishwashers, certain
kinds of fastns, and other appliances. Now, the Biden government
had implemented those regulations as part of their broad climate
change agenda. All they were trying to do what they
were trying to shovel you into a shoot to get
you to start, you know, purchasing electrified electric appliances and

(09:12):
move away from propane gas or anything else. So Chris
Wright emphasized the importance of consumer freedom. Oh what consumer
freedom consumer choice in the United States of America.

Speaker 3 (09:27):
How come we have that?

Speaker 1 (09:29):
He said on that quote, it should not be the
government's plan a place. It should not be the government's
place to decide what kind of appliances you or your
restaurants or your businesses can.

Speaker 3 (09:42):
Buy can buy.

Speaker 1 (09:44):
So we're working to bring back common sense and reduce
the regulatory burdens that he went on to describe as
elitist and counterproductive. No Feasi Sherlock, of course it is now.
I don't know, and I haven't checked this morning, so
I don't know how much coverage this guy. We were

(10:07):
busy doing other stuff, so I didn't have a chance
to watch the network news last night. But my guess
is this wasn't covered. My guess is that it's a
blip in the Associated Press wire service. I don't know
whether the Times or LA or New York Talk. I
don't know whether the Wall Street Journal covered it or not.

(10:28):
But you'd think this would be like this is a BFD,
and you would think there would be a lot of
coverage about this. It probably gave Jared Polis heartburn. Let
me rephrase that, I hope it gave Jared Polis heartburn.
Because the action also includes streamline streamlining those regulations that
were related to natural gas imports and exports, approvals for

(10:53):
electric energy exports, and procedures for purchasing strategic petroleum reserve
oil stocks. Right said quote. Thanks to President Trump's leadership,
we are bringing back common sense slashing regulations meant to
appease Green New Deal fantasies, restrict consumer choice and increase

(11:15):
costs for the American people. So the move comes after
after Trump decided to end Biden's anti coal policies to
try to boost our own domestic energy production and his
attempt to dismantle the weak, woke green agenda of the Democrats,

(11:38):
and I think he's doing exactly that what we elected
him to do. We wanted to get rid of this stuff,
but they not only you know, stole stuff, but Joe
Biden and his appointees took an abundance of costly and

(11:59):
damaging Paul the actions during those four years alone. Now,
fortunately that damage agenda was limited to, as I said,
just the four years a single term presidency. Now the
task of cleaning it up and repairing the damage falls
to Trump and his appointees. In another unfortunate development for

(12:24):
the country, the president has chosen a little eager beaver
an extremely talid array of energy related to appointees, not
including I mean not just Chris Wright, but also the
secret of the EPA Administrator Lee's Eldon, and the Secretary
of the Interior, Doug Bergham. One of the costliest actions

(12:45):
that was taken by Biden that was related to our
national security came when he decided to raid the strategic
patroller and reserved by using it as a campaign tool
to influence the twenty twenty two midterm elections. Early that
year was when Biden invoked a program to rapidly deplete
the contents of the spr pulling more than a million

(13:05):
barrels a day from the underground salt caverns, which holds
the crude for one hundred eighty days and helps the
lowering gas prices at the pump. In an interview this
week with Glenn Beck, the Energy Secretary, Chris Wright revealed
that by drawing the volumes down so rapidly we casually

(13:29):
mentioned this maybe a week or so ago, that Biden
caused significant damage to the integrity of those salt caverns.

Speaker 3 (13:37):
And that was a lot.

Speaker 1 (13:39):
More severe than what I first believe when I first
heard about this story a couple of weeks ago, so
much so that the Energy Department's not going to have
to spend a big piece of its budget to repair
that infrastructure before the caverns can be refilled, he said
in this interview, Biden, and I'm not going to play

(14:02):
the interview because I'm not gonna play back.

Speaker 3 (14:06):
Quote.

Speaker 1 (14:07):
Biden flooded the market with oil reduced the price of
oil in the short term, but at the cost of
US strategic positioning. And they damaged the facilities in the
Strategic Petroleum Reserve by draining them so fast.

Speaker 3 (14:22):
We have to.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
Spend over one hundred million dollars to repair the damage
of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve that was not built for that.

Speaker 3 (14:33):
Now.

Speaker 1 (14:34):
The ESPR, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was authorized by Gerald
Forden Congress back in nineteen seventy five in wake of
the first Arab oil embargo of seventy three seventy four.
And if you were alive, you remember that embargo severe
shortages of gasoline gas lines everywhere, along with you know,

(14:54):
price bikes across the country. So the intent was by
creating the SPR, it was a tool whose careful deployment
would enhance and protect national security in times of a
real emergency, not one that would be used, obviously by
Biden for a cynical political purpose. Here's how Right put

(15:17):
it to Beck. It is for when a very bad
day happens. The world literally runs on oil. If you
don't have oil, you're screwed in everything that we do, economics, defense, healthcare, anything.
So a couple of weeks you're right, unveiled this aggressive
plan to refill the spr estimating the cost of doing

(15:40):
so at the seventy dollars per barrel price that was
prevailing at the time to be about twenty billion dollars.
He also said that he thought it would take anywhere
from four to six years to complete the process because
of the magnitude of Biden's stupid withdrawals. Now, filling the
reserve is not something can be done in a single transaction.

(16:03):
It's a complex process. It's governed by regulations that require
the Department of Energy to solicit competitive bids for kind
of small amounts of crude, which makes it difficult to
find people to you know, bid on that. You put
out a request for bids, you put out an RFP,
you ask for bids, but the amounts are so small,

(16:25):
in fact, they're going to be smaller now until you
get the repairs done that it's hard to get bids
on it. And then the bids you get it's going
to cost you more. So the seventy dollars per barrel
price right now is really kind of meaningless, right told Beck.
By design, it's much slower to fill it than to

(16:45):
drain it. It will take us giving or going flat
out four five, six years to refill the spr We
are dead set committed to doing it, but we're compromised.
But we've compromised are now security for years to get
a little bit of an electoral advantage in twenty twenty two.

Speaker 3 (17:05):
Now.

Speaker 1 (17:06):
I would note here that Wright would love to take
advantage of the low crude oil prices which have dropped
now to around I just say, on average sixty barrel
sixty dollars a barrel. But obviously the same bi low
sale high philosophy that is followed by a smart stock
investor would apply also if you're buying or selling crude oil.

(17:28):
But the buy back program of DOE cannot begin until
that damage is caused by Biden's careless disregard for a
national security, let alone for the reserve itself has been repaired,
and that's going to take months. He reminded Beck that
energy is the infrastructure of life. You cannot and should

(17:51):
not be using it for politics. But when it comes
to national security, I don't think you can use those
terms legitimately with the name Joe Biden, because normly did
he not care about national security. He purposely damaged national security?

Speaker 5 (18:10):
How much security does the reserves really offer us? We
the reserves were built in the day when we use
far less than we do today on a daily basis,
Would it actually even power our military for very long
at all if we really needed it. I don't think

(18:32):
this is a real issue. This is we need a
different answer than the reserves.

Speaker 2 (18:38):
What funny you should ask. I don't have the military numbers,
but I do have from the Energy Information Administration.

Speaker 1 (18:45):
Before before you give any of that, it is first
and foremost design primarily for the military. Okay, not for
civilian gotcha?

Speaker 3 (18:57):
All right? So asterix?

Speaker 2 (19:01):
Yes, According to the Energy Information Administration, in twenty twenty three,
the United States consumed an average of twenty million barrels
of petroleum per day per day, twenty million, and as
of May second, the crude oil in the SPR there

(19:27):
are just shy of four hundred thousand barrels.

Speaker 3 (19:34):
So what's that about thirty minutes? Yeah, probably so, just.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
Just to give yourself a little bit of a care comparison.
But with that little asterix that Michael said at the beginning,
the sprs for the military, not for average daily use.

Speaker 1 (19:47):
And would I would say, in so far as your
point is concerned about. First first, it is primarily for
strategic military purposes. It can be used for other purposes,
but primarily for the military. I don't I don't know
the The reason that it was selected is because it's

(20:11):
so easy, uh, in terms of whether it's refined, not
refined whatever. The salt caverns are neutral in in in
the effect that they have on what is stored there.
That's why they were chosen. The option is have you
ever done a of all in Oklahoma? And some may

(20:40):
remind me of the of the town.

Speaker 3 (20:43):
I'm drawing a blanket name of the town, but if you.

Speaker 1 (20:50):
If you do an aerial view of the storage facility
in it's not Chandler, but it's a C H name
of this town in Oklahoma's in southwest Oklahoma. The storage
is all above ground, all tanks, and it's one of
the I think it is the largest storage facility. And

(21:12):
obviously it's located in tang It's right, but it didn't
my tongue. It'll come to me in a minute. In
Oklahoma because it's strategically located on the pipelines that are
coming from other parts of the country that eventually make
their way down to the Gulf Coast and Houston and
Texas City in that area.

Speaker 3 (21:32):
Cushing, Cushing, Oklahoma just came to me.

Speaker 1 (21:34):
If you do an area like a Google Earth view
of Cushing, you'll see just these vast storage tanks. Well,
the advantage of the SPR is that that's underground, so
you don't have to take up the humongous surface area
that it takes in Cushing for all of those storage facilities.

(21:55):
But to your point, it's simply a stopgap measure. It's
not intended to, for example, fuel the military in World
War Three.

Speaker 2 (22:09):
I do have a number here I do. This is
according to Wikipedia, So consider the source here. The US
military consumes an average of three hundred and forty thousand
barrels per day.

Speaker 3 (22:21):
Barrels, and the other was gallons, right.

Speaker 2 (22:24):
Oh, no, they're both barrels.

Speaker 3 (22:25):
Oh, they were both barrels, both barrels. We consume twenty
million barrels a day for the United States whole.

Speaker 2 (22:31):
Correct, So the SBR currently has just shy of four
hundred thousand barrels, and according to this Wikipedia article, the
military uses three hundred and forty thousand today.

Speaker 1 (22:46):
And then I would just add parenthetically that we have
storage facilities.

Speaker 3 (22:52):
Other places to other places. All right, let's go.

Speaker 1 (22:59):
I want to contin you on a little bit about
some of the changes that have occurred over.

Speaker 3 (23:05):
The past a lot.

Speaker 1 (23:08):
Yesterday, but really starting midweek last week. You know, Musk
obviously the founder of Tesla, owner of Tesla, the CEO
of Tesla, I shouldn't say is the owner because it's
a public traded company. But he has often said that
the EV related subsidies and the tax breaks that were

(23:29):
in the stupid Inflation Reduction Act, that his company could
survive without any subsidies whatsoever. Now he might have the
opportunity to prove that, because the Republican majority of the
Housewaizing Means Committee unveiled in that legislation. Note that I

(23:49):
casually mentioned in the first hour that it would decimate
the subsidized EV industry in this country because the latest draft,
as a reconciliation bill, we completely get rid of the
seven five hundred dollars tax credit that you buyers of
evs get that the entire country subsidizes you buy an EV,

(24:15):
and I think that would probably render most models non
competitive with their internal combustion counterparts. The forty five vote
hydrogen credit is also in the chopping block, as well
as some other special interests that were special interest tax
credits that were passed in the original Inflation Reduction Act.

(24:38):
The wash Uston Examiner's nightly newsletter says this Also in
the chopping block is the Clean Hydrogen Production forty five
vote tax credit. The credit helps to promote the domestic
clean hydrogen production, creating a ten year in city. Republicans
are also phasing out the Clean Electricity Investment and Production

(24:58):
tax Credits, as well known as the Technology Neutral Credits,
which offer tax credits for facilities producing and investing in
renewable energy. The bill is also phasing out the Advanced
Manufacturing Production tax credit aimed at bow String clean energy manufacturing,
while terminating any wind energy components. Republicans are also phasing

(25:20):
out the Clean Electricity Investment and Production tax Credits, also
known as technology Neutral Credits, which offer tax credits for
facilities producing and investing in renewable energy. The bill is
also phasing out again according to Washington Examiners overnight newsletter.
The bill is also phasing out the Advanced Manufacturing Production

(25:41):
tax credit aimed at bow String clean energy manufacturing, while
terminating any wind energy components. Now, when I read through that,
I'm kind of ambivalent about the forty five vote credit
as it applies to blue hydrogen made with the natural gas,

(26:01):
which constitutes more than ninety percent of all hydrogen produced
and used in the United States today. Now, if businesses
like Exxon Mobile can use the credit to cut real
pollution emissions at their facilities and manufacture needed ammonia used
in things that really do benefit society, like fertilizers, well

(26:23):
then maybe more power to them. But too many of
the startups boasting about making clean hydrogen using wind and solar,
they're actually mounting business plans that they know are not sustainable,
and they're doing it solely to benefit themselves. Why because

(26:44):
they milk the government for more and more tax credits
than subsidies. So while they're out doing their fundraising, they're
offsetting the fundraising with the tax credits and the subsidies.

Speaker 3 (26:55):
And what are they doing.

Speaker 1 (26:56):
They're enriching themselves. They've also had the effect of convincing
truly naive public officials in states like Colorado and California
to make these doomed to fail plans to displace natural
gas power plans. Based on this stupid fantasy that they
can easily be replaced by plants that run on green

(27:19):
hydrogen that I don't think will ever come to market.
Be nice, they would, but I just don't think they're
going to. So it's the only way to make that
ruin the scam sector of the economy go away is
to eliminate forty five vote subsidies entirely. That I'm you
know what, Actually I'm fine with that. But as for
the electric vehicle credit, eliminating that would basically put an

(27:39):
end to any thoughts of EV's ever making up a
substantial portion of the fleet of all American cars. And
I think that would just be awesome because you're going
to have to have an incredible and usually consumer un

(28:00):
through rates, an incredible amount of improvements to the national grid.
You're going to have to have an enormous amount a
wind solar and I would hope nuclear power plants that
would start, you know, providing all the additional electricity if
we kept you know, we've eliminated all the requirements that

(28:22):
all these appliance that you knew appliance as you buy
that they be all electric. Your stove's going to be
all electric. If you're a real cook. You don't want
to cook with all electric You want to cook the
natural gas. You want to cook with the flame where
you can really precisely control temperature. So eliminating these EV credits,
I'm absolutely for that, because I really don't care if

(28:44):
evs ever make up or replace internal combustion engines or not,
because all you're doing is shifting the emissions from the
tail tailpipe over to where you're actually producing the electricity.
And like in Colorado, with this stupid net z Row
carbon emission goal that we have, how how are you
going to do that? Because so far I don't see

(29:08):
any nuclear power plants being built in this country. We have,
we have truly wasted hundreds of billions of dollars of
capital on doomed absolutely doomed electric vehicle startups, doomed EV
business units at integrated auto makers, and all these stupid
efforts to distribute these charging stations, half of which I mean,

(29:31):
I think the stat is half of the half of
them don't work at any given time. They're either offline, broken, repaired,
or homeless, or illegal aliens are stealing, breaking into and
taking all the copper. You know, I actually kind of
enjoy blistering Ford Motor Company. I told you this what

(29:52):
a couple of weeks ago for losing well over ten
billion dollars trying to mount its model ev business into existence.
They've been trying that since twenty twenty one. We ought
to remember that it really is just a simple fact
that the existence of the Inflation Reduction Act and those
credits in it and all the other incentives that passed

(30:14):
into law by Democrat Congress and signed by Biden into
law the last four years, that was the driving force
behind those decisions made by the c suite in four
General Motors and other integrated automakers to dive whole hogs
head first into the federal trough why into a break

(30:35):
to support Biden's ruinous agenda. That's all they were doing.
They were just trying to be woke and follow along
with what the administration was trying to put.

Speaker 5 (30:45):
Good morning, Michael and Dragon, Should I say or should
I go?

Speaker 2 (30:49):
But dun dud dud dud dud dud dun.

Speaker 3 (30:54):
Good grief.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
So the CEOs of Ford and GM and well, quite frankly,
if they counterparts of the other legacy carmakers, I think
they deserve the criticism they get for the decisions they
made to buy into that stupid EV agenda, because it
was it was like a religious agenda. It was like
some sort of religious movement. So I think we at

(31:17):
least temper our criticism that they really were in the
midst of some sort of global religious campaign all related
to climate alarmism. And then you had the heavy handed
arm twisting from Biden and people like you know, Secretary
Grant Holme who are out there depleting the spr and
damaging it. And let's not forget too how Biden's Department

(31:40):
of Energy rated what was like some seven billion dollars
or something to build eight charging stations, most of which
are not functioning, and most of which are located in
areas where well there are very few evs on the
road where you can find them. All all thanks to
the Biden administrations prioritizing DEI factors over practicality in whatever

(32:06):
the decision making they were engaged in. You know, Biden
probably views this looting the federal treasury that was instigated
by the Industion Inflation Reduction Act. He probably believes that's
one of his finest moments as president and as the
toe Board of Corporate Losses kind of begins to add
up the bankruptcy of the startups that bought into it

(32:30):
and went out and raised money and wasted those investors' money,
took the subsidies, you know, took the credits, and then
went belly up, and then you have all the laid
off workers. Is that as their misery begins to mount.
I think history is already beginning to tell us a
different and incredibly disastrous story. I'm not opposed to innovation.

(32:54):
I'm not opposed to us finding, you know, new ways
to power cars or our homes or anything else. But
when government comes in and starts trying to subsidize it,
and starts trying to force it down our throats, or
force it in one direction versus another direction, and you
obliterate the free market, You stifle the innovation, and you

(33:16):
stifle the capacity to eventually get where we need to go,
which is, yes, we've got plenty of oil and gas
to get us through the future. There'll be innovations about
how to reduce pollution and carbon emissions even more as
if we really need.

Speaker 3 (33:29):
To do that, which I actually question.

Speaker 1 (33:31):
And on top of that, there'll be some new, big
thing that'll come along, and we'll look back on these
days and go, gosh, we really did fall for that cult.

Speaker 3 (33:43):
And that's what it is. It's nothing more than a cult.