While the discussion is still alive to cut Big Bird’s taxpayer subsidy as a first step to tackling America’s budget woes, it’s a mere drop in the bucket compared to another industry taxpayers do not need to be assisting. Green energy. While Big Bird makes for a cute political ad for President Obama, the giant yellow bird should be the least of his worries. Americans are likely more concerned about the $90 billion of their money he’s wasted.

In September 2008, before Barack Obama was elected president and Steven Chu appointed Department of Energy Secretary, Chu stated, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” Thanks in large part to strict pollution limitations and refinery and pipeline misfortunes, one state is now much closer to those levels.

When California passed the parent trigger law in 2010, one California Federation of Teachers newsletter referred to it as a “lynch mob provision.” It’s safe to say this California law, with similar versions of it found in Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, is upsetting to the teachers unions. Why? The core of this law allows parents at a consistently failing school to strip the power away from the teachers unions and school district.

Renewable energy sources never reach their full capacity. Wind energy is expensive; not always productive and requires backup power generators, like power plants, to make up for its lost capacity. Case in point: Germany. The country is far ahead of all others in its use of and dependence on renewable energy. But no matter how much money is thrown into the wind energy sector, it will never be enough.

California has the ninth largest economy in the world. Once booming with private corporations, agriculturally rich farmlands and tourists, the state is now losing businesses, much-needed food crops and even vacationers. How did the state that all other states sought to emulate fall to the bottom? Along with pristine beaches and beautiful weather, California also has a tax base unfriendly to businesses and those with wealth; it has a rampant environmental movement destroying communities and industries and caters to and favors the public sector union workforce so much so you’d think the state was on a mission to commit economic suicide.

Would the author of the New Deal be pleased with the state of Social Security 80 years later? Did President Johnson, when approving of the Medicare amendment in 1965, know of the volatility of such a program and the government dependency it would create? While Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Johnson did what they thought best for the nation at the time, they must have known that to inject even a little government spending into peoples’ personal lives would only lead to more spending and a new kind of government dependency.

A flood of criticism and questions surround the president’s energy agenda. Unfortunately for him, it seems his “green” energy ventures reek of biased decision making, thereby rightfully calling his agenda into question. Forbes states that 71 percent of Department of Energy grants went to “projects involving his [President Obama] major money bundlers, members of his National Finance Committee, or those who contributed as large Democratic Party donors.” Coincidence or intentional?

In the 1850s droves of gold-hunters hoping to make it rich rushed into what would later be established as the Golden State. The pristine beaches, vast mountains and plenty of opportunity persuaded some to stay in the state. But now, California is facing a different kind of rush—one that is causing people to pick up and leave.

The goal of the EPA’s Regional Haze Rule is the “remedying of any existing impairment of visibility” at 156 National Park and Wilderness areas throughout the U.S. Congress approved of this amendment to the Clean Air Act in 1977, however, power to set standards of emissions was left to the states—not the EPA. The EPA’s role was to simply provide support. Now the EPA seems to be trampling on the state’s authority to control emissions standards by creating its own set of standards. Is the EPA really that concerned about cleaning up haze or is this just another aggressive move to push out the coal industry?

Corporate welfare to favored businesses and industries has swelled in this country. Both sides of the political aisle like it and are equally responsible for it. No matter the consequences or cost to taxpayers, corporate welfare is scattered throughout our nation’s spending record. A report by the Cato Institute found that corporate welfare costs taxpayers almost $100 billion a year. While policy makers think they are doing businesses a favor, often the consequences and repercussions aren’t worth the cost. Remember Solyndra?