Nearly two years ago, President Joe Biden signed the woefully misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act” (IRA) into law, a bill which earmarked hundreds of billions of dollars for “climate” spending. Just as conservatives warned at the time, the Biden administration has since funneled that taxpayer money to various nonprofits and activist groups which have used it to advance a host of left-wing causes.
The case of the “Climate Justice Alliance” (CJA) is indicative of how Biden’s IRA money laundering scheme works. As City Journal reported late last month, the Biden Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently handed CJA $50 million in grant money to distribute essentially as CJA sees fit.
But CJA doesn’t appear interested in cleaning up rivers or pursuing any other worthwhile climate goals. Instead, the group’s website describes its mission as working toward “regenerative economic solutions and ecological justice—under a framework that challenges capitalism and both white supremacy and hetero-patriarchy.”
One example CJA points to of challenging “white supremacy” is its support for “a free Palestine.” As City Journal relays, “Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, one of CJA’s affiliated groups, ‘organized an illegal anti-Israel protest in the Capitol Rotunda in December at which more than 50 activists were arrested.’”
CJA has also reportedly offered financial support for an effort to stop the construction of a new police and firefighter training facility in Atlanta.
In other words, under the guise of fighting “climate change,” the Biden administration just handed $50 million to a radical left-wing activist group with a record of anti-Israel and Defund the Police extremism that is committed to “challenging” capitalism.
But it doesn’t stop there.
In April the Biden EPA also announced that it was awarding nearly $14 billion in IRA funds to three organizations – the Climate United Fund, the Coalition for Green Capital, and Power Forward Communities. Those entities will be charged with establishing “national clean financing institutions that deliver accessible, affordable financing for clean technology projects nationwide.”
In essence, these groups will create quasi-banks to loan and distribute money to private-sector investors, developers, and community organizers.
This move by Biden’s EPA is in apparent violation of the IRA itself, which stipulated that the EPA, not private nonprofit groups, should be directly in charge of distributing taxpayer dollars.
Rep. Max Miller (R-OH), chairman of the Subcommittee on the Environment for the House Committee on Space, Science, and Technology, raised this point in a letter to Biden EPA Administrator Michael Reagan last December. As Miller alleges, “the EPA unilaterally chose to move from making the grant awards themselves to outsourcing this work to their favorite politically aligned nonprofit organizations.”
Many of these nonprofits have executives with close ties to high-level Democrat circles or even the Biden administration itself. For instance, Anthony Foxx, who served as Secretary of Transportation for Barack Obama, is on the board of the Climate United Fund. David J. Hayes, a board member for the Coalition for Green Capital, served as Deputy Secretary of the Interior for Obama and Bill Clinton.
Despite Miller’s warning, however, the EPA has plowed ahead with its plan, and billions in taxpayer dollars are now set to be distributed to dozens of groups with virtually no oversight from Congress or the executive branch.
But lack of oversight appears to be a key feature of the EPA’s distribution scheme. By distancing the Biden administration from the groups that ultimately receive IRA funding, the government can mask the extent to which taxpayer dollars are being used to fund the most extreme elements of the left’s social agenda.
Take, for example, the group Inclusiv, which received $1.87 billion in IRA funding and describes its mission as helping “low- and moderate-income people and communities achieve financial independence through credit unions.” The 2023 Inclusiv conference featured a drag queen, and photos showed individuals vulgarly mocking Catholic nuns.
Professor Carlos Rodrigo Íñiguez, an economist who previously advised the Spanish government, described the entities receiving IRA funding as “semi-financial groups with a strong radical leftism stance,” calling the funding decisions “unfair, divisive, and economically unwise.” He also pointed out that the precursors to these groups have supported far-left causes going back decades, to at least the radical feminist movement in the 1970s. “Back then, it was called ‘positive social impact,’” he said.
Professor Íñiguez also said that Biden’s behavior reminds him of the late Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. “When the Spanish dictator realized he was in his sunset hours, he attempted to pass the national assets to his political friends… I hear an echo of this in Biden’s decisions,” he explained.
Professor Joachim Buchholz, another retired economist who advised German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, also expressed concern that Biden’s IRA handouts appear to have “deprived taxpayers of influence” and oversight in funding decisions. According to him, the Biden EPA’s scheme “contradicts democratic rules” and favors certain groups aligned with the Democrat Party.
Perhaps worst of all, even if Biden loses this November, it can’t reverse the billions of dollars that his administration has already handed out. It seems Americans may be stuck footing the bill not only for the left’s “green revolution,” but also for their broader war on traditional American values and institutions.
Ben Solis is the pen name of an international affairs journalist, historian, and researcher.
