Joe Biden by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm announced on Thursday that President Biden’s Department of Energy will use taxpayer dollars from the recently enacted infrastructure law to hire 1,000 new government employees tasked with the vague mission of leading a “clean energy revolution.”

In a video released Thursday, Granholm dubbed the new program the “Clean Energy Corps” and revealed that the corps will be funded from the $62 billion appropriated to the department by the recently enacted bipartisan infrastructure law. The addition of 1,000 new bureaucrats to the Department of Energy (DOE) would represent the largest staffing expansion at the department since its creation in 1977.

Modeled off the “Civilian Climate Corps” which aimed to boost young adults’ outdoor recreation

According to reporting from The Hill, the new DOE program is modeled off President Biden and congressional Democrats’ proposed “Civilian Climate Corps (CCC)” –  a make-work program for progressive climate activists to promote “environmental justice.”

In September, President Biden described the CCC as a government program designed to help “young adults find work installing solar panels, planting trees, digging irrigation ditches and boosting outdoor recreation.” The CCC itself is currently stalled as part of the Democrats’ reckless trillion tax and spend package.

Government competing with private business for workers

As Main Street struggles to find workers during a labor shortage, Democrats now plan to recruit and add 1,000 activists to the government payroll, increasing government competition with the private sector for workers. The newly launched application portal for the program stresses that the department is seeking applicants “right out of college” and that experience in clean energy isn’t required so long as individuals are “committed to public service and with a mission of supercharging the clean energy revolution.”   

The so-called “Clean Energy Corps” is a clear effort from the Biden Administration to ram through some version of Democrats’s failed effort to create a Civilian Climate Corps, which Congress has thus far rejected.

Taxpayers should not be on the hook for providing progressive climate activists with a government job.