Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Just in case you forgot to wear green today, we’ve got you covered with the top three “green” moments of Jay Inslee’s first term as governor (so far). After all, the only thing “greener” than St. Patrick is Jay Inslee (we mean no offense to the patron saint of Ireland by the comparison).
- Throughout 2013 and early 2014, Inslee and his staff denied the existence of any plan to bypass the Legislature and implement a fuel mandate by executive order. Only, a plan did exist and it would have resulted in a $1-plus per gallon increase in fuel prices. Washington State’s own budget writers predicted that reaching Inslee’s defined carbon-reduction goal via his plan would add an additional $1.47 to the cost of gas. And, according to a study by the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB), Inslee’s fuel mandate would have cost Washington State more than 11,000 jobs over the next five years. Inslee’s fuel mandate was proof that what our green governor is selling by way of his extreme “green” agenda is a far-Left ideology, not responsible policy. Luckily, state Senate Republicans were there to block Inslee’s fuel mandate plans.
- During the 2015 legislative session, Inslee proposed a cap-and-tax scheme that would have reduced the average annual employment by approximately 56,000 jobs over the next 20 years. Nearly 6,000 of those jobs would have been in the manufacturing sector. And, the total aggregate income for workers and business owners would have been reduced by an annual average of $3.1 billion per year. Fearing public backlash, even Democrat lawmakers rejected his cap-and-tax scheme. Inslee failed to garner enough support to pass the scheme out of the Democrat-controlled state House. But, that didn’t stop our green governor from calling on lawmakers to re-consider his scheme time and time again — a reality that only added to his embarrassment.
- After failing to impose any aspect of his extreme “green” agenda during the 2015 legislative session, Jay Inslee announced his intention to jam through a carbon rule by executive order. He instructed the state Department of Ecology to develop a rule and set an overly aggressive timeline. Ultimately, Ecology produced a rule (the misnamed “Clean Air Rule”) on Inslee’s timeline. Only it didn’t last very long. Officials were forced to withdraw the plan “after receiving feedback and criticism on the proposed rule from affected industries and other stakeholders.” They plan to produce another rule in the future, but the debacle confirmed that Inslee is far more concerned with his “legacy” as our nation’s greenest governor than with getting even his extreme “green” agenda right.
Leave a Reply