Sen. Lamar Alexander (R – Agribusiness). Trying to fool all of the people all of the time.

A few years ago, a friend of mine suggested starting a blog entitled something like, “Why The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page Was Idiotic Today.”  You’d never run out of material for posts!

Certainly that was the case today, as Senator Lamar Alexander and Representative Mike Pompeo, both Republicans, make a case against the wind energy tax credit.  Essentially, their argument is that the credit is tantamount to “negative energy pricing,” which in their parlance means that wind producers get paid whether or not there is a specific demand for the energy at the time that it is produced.

This is a horrible policy, the legislators argue:

The Obama administration and other advocates of wind power argue that the subsidy provided by the tax credit allows the wind industry to sustain American jobs. But they are jobs that exist only because of the subsidy. Keeping a weak technology alive that can’t make it on its own won’t create nearly as many jobs as the private sector could create if it had the kind of low-cost, reliable, clean electricity that wind power simply ...

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