A scandal involving Vice President Kamala Harris and her Clean School Bus program — and it’s connections to the Communist Chinese Party (CCP) — has just broken inside Washington, D.C. with just weeks until the 2024 presidential election.
A House Energy and Commerce Committee report has labeled Harris’s Clean School Bus program as “overall a failure,” citing high costs, vulnerability to fraud, and heavy reliance on Chinese manufacturing.
The program, which has distributed $2.9 billion in taxpayer dollars in the form of rebates and grants for electric school buses nationwide, faces scrutiny for its mismanagement — and potential national security implications.
“It is clear the $5 billion Clean School Bus program is overall a failure and, in many cases, a waste of Americans’ hard-earned taxpayer dollars,” The report, released by the committee’s oversight subcommittee, reads.
Committee chairs Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R., Wash., Morgan Griffith, R., V.A., and Buddy Carter, R., G.A., issued the committee’s statement in response to their findings.
One of the primary criticisms is the high cost of electric buses compared to traditional diesel models.
“While diesel buses—which make up the vast majority of the nation’s fleet of nearly 550,000 yellow school buses—typically cost about $100,000, the average electric bus costs upwards of $380,000,” the committee found.
Additional charging infrastructure can add up to $30,000 per bus, with some districts reporting costs as high as $50,000.
The program’s implementation was also mismanaged.
EPA data shows that only 135 buses across 61 school districts have been deployed from the October 2022 funding round, which was intended to support 2,400 buses across 389 school districts. Fifty-five districts have withdrawn from the program entirely, citing issues such as high costs and technological problems.
The report raises concerns about the widespread fraud in the program.
It cites an instance where “an administrative entity without any students was approved for program funding by the EPA.”
The EPA inspector general reportedly “was forced to issue subpoenas and conduct surveillance to obtain information about a contractor selected for Clean School Bus program funding.”
A significant portion of the criticism focuses on the program’s reliance on Chinese manufacturing, particularly for EV batteries and components.
“According to the International Energy Agency, China dominates global electric vehicle battery supply chains, boasting a 75 percent share of manufacturing capacity,” the committee said.
“ESB batteries rely on opaque supply chains rife with national security risks and that pose grave human rights concerns, and are to the benefit of adversarial regimes, such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which largely has a monopoly on certain parts of the supply chain for these products,” the report reads.
The report notes that “Chinese companies will mine lithium in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, thus enriching both China and the Taliban,” citing Paul A. Brinkley, a former U.S. deputy undersecretary of defense.
The investigation also uncovered clean potential conflicts of interest. BYD Americas, a subsidiary of Chinese EV manufacturer BYD Company, received $395,000 under the Clean School Bus program. Six months later, BYD Americas’ president, Ke Li, a Chinese national, donated $50,000 to Harris’s campaign.
In response to the report, the Biden administration’s EPA defended the program, stating it is “creating the future that our children deserve – a future with cleaner air on the bus, in bus loading areas, and in the communities in which they operate.”
However, the House committee chairs concluded that, “As the official tasked with ensuring the success of the program, Vice President Harris bears great responsibility for its significant shortcomings.”