House GOP: Where are the ‘green jobs’?

House Republicans accused top Obama administration officials Thursday of fudging the numbers in an effort to show that the White House’s clean energy policies have been successful in improving the economy and creating jobs.

Rep. Connie Mack (R-Fla.) criticized Labor Secretary Hilda Solis for counting drivers of hybrid buses in the administration’s “green job” calculations.

“What makes driving a hybrid bus a green job and driving another bus that’s not a hybrid bus not a green job? Driving a bus is driving a bus, right?” Mack asked Solis at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing Thursday on the administration’s green jobs push.

Mack’s criticism highlights the growing frustration among Republicans with the administration’s clean-energy policies. 

{mosads}Thursday’s hearing — titled “How Obama’s Green Energy Agenda is Killing Jobs” — is the latest attempt by Republicans to pummel the administration on the issue in light of the bankruptcy of California solar company Solyndra, which received a $535 million loan guarantee from the Obama administration in 2009. The company laid off 1,100 workers.

Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said Thursday that Obama’s clean-energy push has resulted in “very little return” for the American people.

The administration has “systematically waged a war on carbon-based energy in pursuit of new green energy,” Issa said, calling green jobs a “political rallying cry designed to unite environmentalists [and] union leaders” around the White House’s agenda.

Mack and other Republicans on the committee revived longstanding criticisms Thursday of green jobs, arguing that the term is not clearly defined. 

“If you pad the numbers to try to make it look better for you at the expense of the taxpayers, it’s offensive,” Mack said.

Democrats on the committee rejected Republicans’ claims about green jobs.

“Despite this rhetoric, there’s no evidence that the administration’s clean energy programs are resulting in fewer jobs,” committee ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings (Md.) said during the hearing.

On the issue of the hybrid bus drivers, Solis countered that the drivers do in fact have green jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, she said, counts jobs in the transportation sector that have the effect of reducing pollution as a green job. Hybrid buses result in fewer harmful emissions than traditional buses.

“Mr. Congressman, would you rather have that person unemployed?” Solis asked Mack. “It’s an industry that is green. The industry in which he is employed is fuel-efficient.

“I don’t understand why someone is saying that I am misleading the public,” Solis continued. “I am not.”

Republican staff for the committee released a report Thursday calling green jobs a “propaganda tool designed to provide legitimacy to a predetermined outcome that benefits a political ideology rather than the economy or the environment.”

Issa, at the hearing, said the term “green jobs” is “poorly defined,” arguing that the definition counts jobs that are not traditionally seen as green.

“If a lobbyist is paid a million dollars a year here to lobby for green grants, apparently it’s a green job,” Issa said.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) echoed Issa’s concerns.

“We have this exorbitant claim of hundreds of thousands of jobs, yet we don’t have a definition of what those are going to be,” Chaffetz said.

But the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has developed a definition of green jobs.

In written testimony before the committee Thursday, BLS Commissioner Keith Hall defined green jobs this way:

Jobs in business establishments that produce goods or provide services that benefit the environment or conserve natural resources. BLS refers to these as green goods and services jobs.

Jobs in which the work performed makes the production processes of business establishments more environmentally friendly or use fewer natural resources. BLS refers to these as green technologies and practices jobs.

BLS is slated to release a report laying out the number of green jobs that have been created under the Obama administration in mid-2012.

Staffers for Democrats on the panel released their own report Thursday outlining green jobs in the districts of each of the members of the committee. The report points to findings of a July 2011 report by the Brookings Institution that says the “clean energy economy” employs 2.7 million people.

Cummings also pointed to recent press reports (read The Hill’s story here) that show Issa pressed the Energy Department to approve loans for energy projects in his district, including an electric vehicle company.

“In terms of this loan guarantees program, it seems that you were for it before you were against it,” Cummings said.

Issa countered that he is a “supporter of electric and hybrid vehicles and have no problem at all with trying to have vehicles that use more efficient electricity.”

Administration officials testifying at the hearing Thursday likewise defended the White House’s clean-energy policies.

“The green economy is growing significantly faster than the national economy,” Solis said, pointing to the Brookings Institution estimate that the investments in renewable energy support 2.7 million jobs.

Solis said the Labor Department has trained 52,000 people so they can work in the clean-energy sector. The department hopes to train a total of 96,000 workers.

Deputy Energy Secretary Daniel Poneman echoed Solis’s comments.

“There’s a significant economic and employment opportunity that can be seized by the companies and countries that successfully innovate and compete,” Poneman said. “This is a race. It is a race to capitalize on the tremendous economic and job-growth potential in these industries.”