If there’s one thing the Biden-Harris administration has perfected, it’s the art of wasting taxpayer money. They’ve shelled out more cash on climate policies than any other administration, only for a recent study to reveal what many of us suspected all along: most of these policies have been a massive flop.

This study, published in the Journal of Science, reviewed around 1,500 climate policies implemented between 1998 and 2022 by 41 developed countries. Out of these, only 63 policies—or a mere 4 percent—managed to reduce total emissions by any significant amount, from 0.6 to 1.8 billion tons of CO2. The researchers predict that the combined CO2 emissions from these 41 nations will exceed the Paris Climate Agreement’s target by a staggering 23 billion metric tons by 2030. So much for “leading the world” on climate!

The study pointed out that two of the most popular tools—subsidies and regulations—rarely do anything to reduce emissions. Meanwhile, approaches like carbon taxes, although not particularly popular, are proven to be more effective. As one media outlet paraphrased, taxing carbon actually works, while subsidizing “green energy” doesn’t. It’s not like this is groundbreaking news. A 2013 study sponsored by the Obama administration came to the same conclusion: subsidies are a “poor tool for reducing greenhouse gases.” So what did the Biden-Harris administration do? Double down on subsidies and regulations, of course!

Despite knowing that subsidies are practically useless in reducing emissions, the Biden-Harris team has thrown even more taxpayer dollars at these failed strategies. The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) funneled over $110 billion into climate and energy projects. Then came the laughably named “Inflation Reduction Act” (IRA) in 2022, which pledged $369 billion over the next decade for climate change and energy. Thanks to a recent Congressional Budget Office projection, we now know that these climate tax credits could actually end up costing around $428 billion—a quick 16 percent increase over initial estimates.

But the biggest spending items in both the IIJA and IRA are subsidies, the very tools that have been shown time and again to be the least effective way to cut CO2 emissions. The combined cost of these pieces of legislation is more than $500 billion, all to prop up failing policies. Worse still, this government spending spree helped spark the highest inflation rates in 40 years. Prices for everyday essentials like food and housing are still sky-high for Americans, even as inflation shows signs of cooling.

One glaring example of this waste is the administration’s obsession with electric vehicles (EVs). To push people into buying EVs, the IRA offers hefty incentives: up to $7,500 for new EVs, $4,000 for used ones, and up to $40,000 for commercial EV purchases. Meanwhile, the IIJA allocated another $7.5 billion to build 500,000 charging stations across the country. Sounds impressive, right? Well, as of May this year, only eight of those stations have been built. Eight.

No wonder consumers are getting frustrated with their pricey new EVs. There aren’t enough places to charge them, electricity costs are rising, and used EVs are losing value faster than a New Year’s resolution to lose weight. The lack of demand has hit automakers hard—Ford’s EV division lost $1.3 billion in the first quarter of 2024, nearly twice its losses from the same period in 2023. To stop the financial bleeding, Ford is now scrapping plans for new EV models and slowing production. Even General Motors has lowered its 2024 EV production goals, forecasting that EVs will only account for 8 percent of the U.S. market next year—a far cry from the administration’s lofty target of 50 percent by 2030.

Now, don’t expect Kamala Harris to change course if she ends up in the Oval Office. Her past record shows she’s all in on these radical climate policies. As a senator, she backed the Green New Deal and called for an end to fracking on day one of her hypothetical presidency. She even proposed spending a whopping $10 trillion to transform the U.S. into a zero-emission economy by 2045, and establishing a federal Climate and Environmental Justice Accountability office.

Even as her team tries to paint her as more moderate, Harris hasn’t walked back any of her more extreme climate proposals. At the recent Democratic National Convention, her speech was full of lofty rhetoric about “the freedom to breathe clean air and drink clean water.” Yet this comes from someone whose administration wants to restrict Americans’ freedom to drive gas-powered cars or even use gas stoves!

The Harris-Walz campaign, like many Democrats, is using the term “freedom” to cloak their agenda in a way that sounds palatable to voters. But let’s be real—these policies are anything but free. They come at the expense of your hard-earned money and your personal choices. Voters should see through this deception and reject these wasteful, freedom-stripping policies in the upcoming election.