Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, boasting about government partnerships with green energy companies, declared that President Obama and his team have got economic growth "figured out."
"So we’ve got the growth part of it figured out – if we can get the green part of it actually figured out as well," Clinton said yesterday in an address before Denmark's Parliament. The audience laughed, even though they didn't know yet that the unemployment rate would rise in today's report to 8.2 percent.
"So we have every confidence that this industry will thrive well into the future, and we certainly cannot afford to overlook its potential, not if we’re serious about creating jobs and achieving sustainable economic growth," Clinton had said of the green energy industry moments earlier.
Clinton also touted Obama's cap-and-trade style crackdown on coal plants, despite the lack of congressional approval.
"It’s often not well-known, because our legislative approach in the Obama Administration was not able to pass completely through the Congress, but the Administration has gone forward in taking actions," she told the Danes. "In March, our Environmental Protection Agency put forth the first ever national standards for CO2 emissions from new power plants, the largest stationary source of carbon pollution in the United States, accounting for 40 percent of our emissions."
Clinton's emphasis on the $90 billion in government spending on wind and solar energy came the same day that Republican Mitt Romney made a surprise visit to Solyndra, to emphasize how President Obama gave $535 million to a politically-connected solar company that ultimately went bankrupt.
