President Obama’s final annual budget, released Tuesday, spends heavily on climate and clean energy, shifting away from fossil fuels.
Obama’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2017, tops four trillion dollars and includes funding to fight climate change, and to modernize our aging electric grid. Billions would go to clean energyR&D and hundreds of billions to build a modern transportation system over the next ten years. That transportation infrastructurewould be paid for through a tax on oil- at ten dollars and 25 cents a barrel.
The president’s budget does include some funding for coal, in the form of job retraining for out of work coal miners, investments in health and retirement for those workers and additional funding to get abandoned mines cleaned up. The budget now goes to congress where it will likely face serious opposition.