Alexander: Obama goes around Congress to help ‘Big Wind’

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said the Obama administration is tweaking the tax code to protect and extend wind energy subsidies.

“Congress allowed this wasteful wind subsidy to expire at the end of last year,” Alexander said on Thursday. “Now the Obama administration is yet again going around Congress and allowing Big Wind to waste even more taxpayer dollars, instead of forcing wind to stand on its own in the marketplace and respecting the fact that Congress has allowed this wasteful Washington subsidy to expire.”

{mosads}This month, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued new guidelines so that more energy producers could qualify for the wind production tax credit by giving the tax credits to producers that started construction before 2013 and will be in service before 2016.

Alexander said the wind industry has already received billions of taxpayer dollars and some states have little to show for it.

“The IRS has announced it will now be easier to qualify for the wind production tax credit, Washington’s most conspicuous and wasteful taxpayer subsidy and one that unfairly burdens Tennesseans,” Alexander said. “Tennessee gets very little of the benefit of this wasteful wind subsidy, because the wind doesn’t blow enough in the southeastern United States.”