The Environmental Protection Agency has no ability to track or conduct oversight of more than $650 million in taxpayer funds that a Biden-backed green group wired to dozens of credit union accounts last month, the agency told the Washington Free Beacon.
In mid-February, the New York-based eco group Inclusiv—which received $1.9 billion last year as part of the EPA's $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund program—transferred $651 millionto 108 credit unions across 27 states and Puerto Rico. The group said the credit unions would use the funding to offer financing for green energy projects such as solar installations and electric vehicle chargers within their jurisdictions.
Inclusiv initiated the transfer on the same day that EPA administrator Lee Zeldin discovered that the Biden administration had parked $20 billion in Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund funding in accounts at an outside financial institution, limiting federal control and oversight of the money. In collaboration with the Department of Justice, Zeldin ultimately froze the accounts, but not before Inclusiv completed its transaction.
"The passthrough structure of these grants is a significant deviation from how EPA regularly conducts oversight of grantees," EPA spokeswoman Molly Vaseliou told the Free Beacon. "EPA has no visibility nor role into understanding how these taxpayer dollars are being spent on the ground."
Traditionally, the EPA selects which projects to fund and distributes grants directly to developers. In this case, however, Inclusiv solicited grant applications from credit unions who will then select which projects the federal funds will finance and determine the terms developers must meet—a setup that takes the EPA entirely out of the loop.
It's the latest issue to emerge from the Biden administration's efforts to rapidly implement massive green energy programs during its final months in office. And it raises additional questions about the EPA's Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund in particular—Zeldin has likened the program to a "green slush fund" and has opened broad probes into the fund as a whole.
After Zeldin's team located that $20 billion in program funding at an outside financial institution, the Free Beacon reported that the Biden EPA had awarded $2 billion of that sum to a brand new environmental group linked to Georgia Democratic politician Stacey Abrams and another $5 billion to a senior Biden EPA official's most recent employer.
Inclusiv's $1.9 billion grant was also part of that $20 billion sum.
Overall, in April 2024, the EPA dished out that $20 billion to just eight nonprofit organizations—some of which had been formed for the sole purpose of receiving the funding. The Biden administration designed the program to act as a "green bank," meaning those eight award recipients will act as pass-throughs, doling out subawards and deciding which green projects to fund nationwide.
"This award will enable us to direct grants and assistance to high-impact credit unions and cooperativas that create the conditions for an inclusive and equitable transition to a greening economy," Inclusiv president and CEO Cathie Mahon said in August.
According to an "investment strategy" document Inclusiv submitted to the EPA last year and reviewed by the Free Beacon, the group intends to use $1.7 billion to award pass-through grants. The remaining $187 million, it said, will be used to fund its own operations and technical assistance services.
The scope of that funding dwarfs the amount of money Inclusiv previously handled. In 2023, Inclusiv reported $11.9 million in revenue and $10.1 million in expenses, according to the group's most recent tax filings.
"This is borderline fraudulent. It is just like a money laundering scheme," said Travis Fisher, the director of energy and environmental policy studies at the Cato Institute. Fisher is the author of a forthcoming report that concludes Biden-era green programs created "an overwhelming and undue burden on taxpayers."
"I am frustrated to my core," Fisher told the Free Beacon. "One thing that I think is even more frustrating is when we compile the entire spending of all of what the Inflation Reduction Act authorizes, it is such a staggering amount of money that the part that we're talking about that is probably fraudulent, or at the very least shady and questionable, is a tiny fraction of the total spending."
"By comparison to the rest of it, it seems small," he continued. "They thought they could fly under the radar with that and we were essentially all fooled and caught flat-footed."
Inclusiv did not respond to a request for comment.
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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