Ohio Senator J.D. Vance introduced a bill during the 1st session of the
118th Congress that would, if passed, cost American taxpayers billions of
dollars, run in the face of climate change, and would sell all of us out
to the oil and gas industry. Vance, once a critic of Trump�s firebrand
�America�s Hitler� image, has cozied up to him in dramatic fashion,
reinventing himself from a Never Trumper to MAGA with direct help from
Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk. A big part of that reinvention was a shift
to climate denialism and Trump-style populism, both of which are on full
view in his proposed Drive American Act.

As recently as 2020 Vance was seen praising solar energy and begged for a
�clean energy future� to cure the �climate problem in our society.� When
it became clear to him that he�d need Donald Trump�s endorsement to win
the Ohio senate race, he began a dramatic shift his positions on climate
denialism and fossil fuels. This bill proved to Trump that Vance would
kiss the ring in exchange for power, killing the old Vance to grow a new
one in his image.

The Drive American Act seeks to gut the Biden administration�s electric
vehicle tax rebate program, with the first half of the bill undoing the
program altogether. In the latter half of the bill, Vance proposes that
American taxpayers follow him into a ridiculously circular logic that
would instead place up to a $7,500 rebate on all new gasoline- and
diesel-powered cars, trucks, and SUVs. Vehicles with larger payloads and
more seats would be eligible for more of the incentive. In order to take
advantage of this, you�d need to live in a household making less than
$300,000, and the vehicle could not exceed $80,00o. Both �limits� are
well north of average.

Americans are buying more electric vehicles than ever before, expected to
exceed ten percent of all new cars sold in the country this year. That
is, in part, due to the successful incentive program which promotes
American-made and union-made vehicles and components over all others.
Vance�s bill would instead push Americans into bigger and more expensive
gas-guzzling SUVs and pickup trucks. In order to achieve the full $7,500
credit under the Drive American Act, your new purchase would have to be
able to haul a big load and lots of people.

As the bill is written, each American-assembled vehicle sold powered by
gas or diesel would automatically qualify for a $2,500 price reduction.
There is an additional incentive of $500 �for every 250 pounds of payload
capacity in excess of 1,000 pounds,� meaning a vehicle with a payload of
2,500 pounds would qualify for an extra $3,000 rebate. The final
incentive structure would give an extra $1,000 for each additional seat
in vehicles with seating capacity more than 4. A seven-seat vehicle would
qualify for a $3,000 bonus. Both bonus incentives are capped at a
collective $5,000, meaning you could have a truck with 3,500 pounds of
payload capacity hit the full $7,500, or a seven-seat SUV with at least
2,000 pounds of payload capacity.

There are approximately 11 million new vehicles produced in the United
States every year, and about 1.6 million of those are destined for
export. With an average transaction price on new cars in the U.S. now
running at around $47,000 we can assume that at least 80 percent of cars
sold are under the $80,000 threshold. In May EVs and plug-in hybrids made
up around seven percent of total U.S. new car sales. For the purposes of
this exercise, we�ll estimate that 6,993,600 American-made gas and diesel
vehicles are eligible for at least the base $2,500 amount.

There�s almost no vehicles on the road which would not qualify for at
least some amount of extra seat incentive or payload incentive. Even
small sedans like the Alabama-built Hyundai Elantra would get $3,500 back
for having five seats. Let�s assume the average incentive would be
$5,000, for argument�s sake.

If each of those 6,993,600 new cars made in America and sold to Americans
qualified for an average $5,000 incentive, it would add a massive
$34,968,000,000 to the national budget.

And to what end? What does J.D. Vance�s America get from pushing new gas
and diesel car sales? During his 2022 campaign J.D. Vance was one of the
top recipients of oil and gas contributions, getting a nearly $300,000
cash injection in exchange for buying a mouthpiece.

Now if anyone could figure out Elon Musk�s motivations for personally
pushing climate denialist and electric car opponent Vance ever closer to
second-in-line for the presidency, and committing $45 million per month
to the cause, the story might get even more interesting.
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