The House Oversight Committee is launching an investigation into the Biden administration’s newly launched American Climate Corps, a climate workforce the White House created last month to train workers in the transition to a greener economy.
In a letter to AmeriCorps’s CEO Michael Smith , Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) and Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) announced that they would be looking into the federal dollars flowing into the Climate Corps, requesting related documents and information related to the role and funding of the program.
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“According to the announcement, as the nexus of the ACC for federal agencies, AmeriCorps seems poised to facilitate the flow of an unspecified sum of federal taxpayer dollars to unknown individuals and entities,” Comer wrote in his letter. “It is unclear where these funds are coming from and for what purposes they will be used.”
The committee is calling for documents and communications that account for the projected cost of the Climate Corps and communications between AmeriCorps and related agencies, state governments, and any relevant third parties. The lawmakers also questioned whether or not the program would redirect funds from other AmeriCorps programs or existing agencies.
The period of the requested documents falls between January 2021 and the present. The committee has set a deadline for these documents for no later than Oct. 27.
The Biden administration launched the initiative last month with the goal of hiring and training a new generation of workers that will focus on clean energy and a climate-resilient economy. The initiative, modeled after Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps, is expected to employ more than 20,000 workers and train them in projects that range from restoring coastal wetlands to deploying energy-efficient technologies.
The launching of the program came amid revived pressure from progressive Democrats, who called for the White House to launch the Climate Corps through executive order after it was left out of the Inflation Reduction Act. Led by climate hawks Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), the lawmakers asserted the project was necessary to work on key conservation and climate priorities. However, the new program is a sliver of what was initially proposed in Biden’s 2021 American Jobs Plan, which would have invested $10 billion for a 300,000 workforce.
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The Oversight Committee, led by Comer, has routinely launched investigations into moves it sees as having the potential for federal funds mismanagement. Last month, the committee launched a probe into the Biden administration’s response to the Maui wildfires, reasoning that oversight was necessary to “ensure that locals are receiving the assistance they need, and taxpayer dollars are being used effectively.” Republicans on the panel also initiated an investigation into Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm’s “taxpayer-funded electric vehicle road trip,” which ran into several mishaps underlining the challenges of driving EVs across long distances. At one point, police officials were called on Granholm’s staffers for blocking a charging station for the secretary to use.
AmeriCorps also has a choice in whether or not to comply, since it is not legally mandated by a subpoena. AmeriCorps did not respond to a request for comment from the Washington Examiner.