Apparently, word hasn’t reached the Minnesota House of Representatives Democrat Caucus that 500,000 Minnesotans don’t have jobs today and won’t be paying much in taxes this year. These big spenders continue to ram through legislation that spends money we don’t have to satisfy their liberal special interest friends. Yesterday’s winner? Electric Vehicle fanatics.
The House Democrats legislation in question would grant tax dollar rebates to purchasers or lessees of electric vehicles (EVs). These rebates would consist of $2,500 to purchasers/lessees of new EVs and $500 to those who purchase/lease used EVs. Businesses would also be eligible for these taxpayer subsidies.
Furthermore, to reduce the outrageously high sticker cost of EVs, the state would allow purchasers to apply the taxpayer subsidy at the “point of sale” meaning that you would effectively use taxpayer dollars to subsidize your $59,999 Tesla purchase. To further entice the purchase of EVs, the state would also give cash grants to automobile dealers (up to $40,000 per year per dealership) to train employees on the maintenance and sales of EVs.
And finally, because you can’t drive your EV from one end of our large state to the other without stopping to charge it (especially during our brutal Minnesota winters) the state would issue cash grants to install additional EV charging stations throughout the state. Another liberal special interest, labor unions, got their cut in this part of the bill: the installation of these new public EV charging stations would be required to pay prevailing wage to the workers installing EV charging stations.
Margaret Thatcher once said that “The trouble with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” I wonder when the House DFL will realize that day has come in Minnesota.
