But the jobs that were supposed to be created never materialized—at least not in the United States. According to the White House, last year's stimulus created 190,700 green jobs, but the administration's own Department of Energy (DOE) puts the figure at only 82,000. And, as the Washington Times reported on September 10, as much as 80 percent of some green programs, including $2.3 billion in tax credits, went to foreign firms that employed workers primarily in China, South Korea, and Spain…..Other problems have arisen on the green-jobs front. In 2007 the newly elected Democratic Congress joined forces with the Bush administration to enact an energy bill which, among other things, provided for the phase-out of traditional incandescent light bulbs. It turns out, however, that their replacement, the compact fluorescent light (CFL), can be manufactured much more cheaply in China. As a result, 200 workers at a GE light bulb factory in Winchester, Virginia recently lost their jobs. Disillusionment with the broken promise of green jobs has even made its way into the ranks of the Obama administration's political allies. In early September the United Steelworkers union filed a trade complaint against China, charging the Chinese with unfairly subsidizing the manufacture of components used by the renewable energy industry, at the expense of U.S. workers. Ruffling even more feathers was a report issued last fall by American University's Investigative Reporting Workshop finding 11 U.S. wind farms used government grants to purchase most of their wind turbines—695 of 982 purchased—from foreign suppliers.heartland.org
