President Joe Biden wants $8 billion in taxpayer funds to support his green jobs training program for Americans.
Biden requested the funds for the American Climate Corps (ACC), a green jobs training program Biden established via executive action in 2023, in his budget request for fiscal year 2025.
The government would provide the $8 billion over the course of the next decade with a goal to hire 50,000 people into the program each year by 2031, according to the budget request.
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During Thursday’s State of the Union address, Biden stated that he intends to triple the number of participants in the ACC by the end of the decade. The idea of the program is to prepare Americans — particularly young people — to work in climate-related fields, including federal civil service jobs.
Numerous federal agencies will be involved in implementing the program, including AmeriCorps, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of the Interior, the Commerce Department, the Department of Energy and the Labor Department, according to the budget request.
The program has already drawn scrutiny from congressional Republicans, who launched an oversight effort into the program to obtain internal cost projections and any potential communications between the relevant parts of the Biden administration and environmentalist groups about the ACC, among other things.
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Green New Deal advocates pushed hard for the ACC to be included in what became the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s signature climate bill that became law in 2022, according to The Associated Press. Ultimately, the ACC was cut out of the bill during negotiations, as Republican legislators strongly opposed it because of concerns about its potential costs.
Some Democrats wanted the IRA to allocate up to $132 billion for the program, and an earlier proposal from Biden called for $10 billion to fund the program.
While the ACC did not make the final cut for the IRA, Biden opted to create it using executive authority in September 2023 to the applause of activist organizations. The White House has already started hosting information sessions for the program, and the ACC is expected to start churning out its first cohorts of participants later this year.
The White House did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
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