Sen. Bernie Sanders has a new bill out to kill fossil fuel subsidies that come in the form of tax breaks for the oil and gas industry. Instead, Sanders would redirect those funds to generate 10 million solar roofs in America, which would create installation jobs and significantly reduce fossil fuel consumption.

The President showed up unscheduled at a White House briefing today to excoriate House Republicans for fouling up a Senate deal on a stopgap measure to extend the payroll tax cut, unemployment benefits and a doctor’s reimbursement fix. But there are a number of other measures that also will not get extended into next year, including the production tax credit for wind energy.

Maybe Warren Buffett’s purchase of a California solar farm will finally force a recognition of the potential of solar energy from an economic standpoint. Since the dissolution of Solyndra, oil-besotted conservative lawmakers have dismissed this potential, saying that the industry was simply unprofitable. When Buffett makes an investment, that becomes a harder sell.

This stupid Solyndra circus is starting to remind me of the late 1990s, when any whiff of scandal was like catnip to the media. This is 1/80th of the total price of loans made from the Energy Department’s program, none of the other companies involved have failed, and yet this is supposed to be an object lesson in how green jobs cannot compete. Never mind the $40 billion in subsidies given to oil and gas companies or the hundreds of millions in loan guarantees propping up the nuclear industry. This notion of a free market in energy is ridiculous.

In point of fact, the domestic solar industry, a net exporter last year, happens to be booming.

This would not be the first time that the political and policy shops bicker inside a White House. But what’s the claim here? That there was a rash move to make a solar energy investment for political reasons without assessing the risk? Then you have to blame the Bush Administration, which started the loan process with Solyndra as far back as 2006 as part of a previous energy bill.

What are Democrats proposing? What message about the 2011-2012 Congress are they putting forward? Saying “Republicans want to cut your Social Security benefits and privatize the program, and we’ll never privatize Social Security!” is completely unfulfilling and untrustworthy, and the fact that the stimulus expanded GDP and created jobs in the past says nothing about the future, when its impact will wane. Despite everything already done, the economy is suffering. What’s your plan?

As I said in a previous post this morning, from a political standpoint, you would think that Democrats and the White House would create a jobs platform and hold a referendum on it. They may be edging closer in that direction.

Why not use our roadways to gather up sunlight and use it to power our cars, homes and lives? That’s the Solar Roadways idea.