House lawmakers are working on possible changes to a bill that would bail out nuclear plants while repealing the state’s green energy standards on utilities. The measure could dole out more than $150 million to Ohio’s two nuclear plants. The bill is collecting a variety of opponents that don’t usually take the same side.
Conservative groups have joined environmental groups in voicing their objections to the energy bill - albeit for different reasons.
Micah Derry with Americans for Prosperity Ohio said the bill is an unfair bailout.
Derry said bills like this one give capitalism a bad name. “Policies that have led to hundreds of thousands of students on university campuses across the United States to believe that capitalism is a fraud, a fake, and a failure," he said. "It is because they’ve been told, and observed that such cronyism and corporate welfare is actually capitalism.”
The conservative Buckeye Institute and the Ohio Chamber of Commerce also have concerns with the nuclear subsidies but do support a repeal of the alternative energy standards.
