A supply-side economist by trade, Diana Furchtgott-Roth is the author of the chapter in the Mandate for Leadership that concerns the Department of Transportation (DOT). Her bio in the book credits her with being director of the Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment at the Heritage Foundation. In addition, she is listed as having held senior positions in the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush. More recently, she served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology at the U.S. Department of Transportation during the Trump administration after her nomination was returned to the president.
She is, like many others involved in Project 2025, a fossil fuel shill. For example, she has posted this on Twitter under the handle @DFR_Economics: “Core of South Africa’s decline is disastrous energy policy—which slowed economic growth and raised unemployment. New coalition needs secure fossil fuel-based energy supply to grow economy. Fossil fuels = economic progress.” This simplistic tweet about South Africa is not an outlier when it comes to her advocacy for fossil fuel use.
If one is inclined to defend against the charge of her being simplistic on the basis of Twitter’s character limits, one may turn to something longer. She is the author of a piece not limited by Twitter’s length restrictions that makes the argument that fossil fuel power sources are more reliable than renewable energy sources. (Experience paints a more complex picture in which conservative blame on renewable energy sources for grid failure is debunked.) She is not alone among authors of the Mandate for Leadership in making this claim. The Mandate for Leadership characterizes renewable energy as “intermittent” and fossil fuel energy sources as “dispatchable” and “on-demand.” Even if the issue were as simple as that, that does not mean that renewable energy sources should not be used as much as possible.
In reality, the failures of South Africa’s power grid are not due to its employment of renewable energy sources, as even she comes close to acknowledging in her article. An article published by the Strategist lays the blame on a mix of factors, including “poor planning” and “a haemorrhaging of human resources and systemic corruption.” (Speaking of a haemorrhaging of human resources—that is exactly what Project 2025 envisions: the replacement of experienced professionals with personnel selected for reasons other than competence and experience.)
Furchtgott-Roth has also followed a misleading Heritage Foundation narrative that curbing pollution and moving toward renewable energy would make the United States dependent on China. (As if the United States could not develop its own renewable energy manufacturing base.)
Furchtgott-Roth’s willingness to oversimplify in service of ideology is not limited to fossil fuel advocacy. According to the National Women’s Law Center, “Furchtgott-Roth has a long track record of distorting data to argue against legal protections for women’s rights – whether she’s denying the wage gap exists or implying that workplace sexual harassment is over-reported.” Arguing against Furchtgott-Roth’s appointment to a government position, the center concludes: “Furchtgott-Roth’s record shows she prefers espousing political ideology to engaging with serious analytical work. For someone who would be filling a government research position at a high level, this is deeply worrisome.” In this regard, Furchtgott-Roth is typical of the authors of the Mandate for Leadership. Moreover, the center’s conclusion reveals what will happen if Project 2025’s plan to flood the federal government with ideologues comes to fruition. Data-driven science and policy will be discarded in favor of decisions and policy based on ideology, not factual analysis.
Furchtgott-Roth has even faced criticism from fellow right-wing/libertarian, climate denialist sources. Writing for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Marc Scribner offers a “point-by-point response on where things went wrong in a recent commentary by Manhattan Institute labor economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth.”
The Department of Transportation
In the chapter on the department, Furchtgott-Roth writes:
“In pursuit of an anti–fossil fuel climate agenda never approved by Congress, the Biden Administration has raised fuel economy requirements to levels that cannot realistically be met by most categories of ICE vehicles. The purpose is to force the auto industry to transition away from traditional technologies to the production of electric vehicles (EVs) and compel Americans to accept costly EVs despite a clear and persistent consumer preference for ICE-powered vehicles. In further support of this agenda, federal regulators administer a scheme of generous fuel economy credits that subsidize EV producers such as Tesla at the expense of legacy automakers.”
A step-by-step examination of this statement is in order. First, if the Biden administration is anti-fossil fuel, it has a strange way of showing it, given that fossil fuel output in the United States is and has been at record highs. In short, the Biden administration is not “anti-fossil fuel.”
The Biden administration does have a climate agenda that consists of acknowledging human-caused climate change and seeking to address it. This is a bad thing only according to those who would prefer to deny or obfuscate climate change and its gravely adverse effects.
“Never approved by Congress” refers to a common complaint among conservatives against what they call the administrative (or deep) state. In the American system of government, Congress writes the laws, and the executive branch, which includes many agencies, enforces or administers the laws. Even though laws can be highly detailed, they cannot cover every eventuality, so agencies make detailed regulations and offer guidance and opinions on how to apply and follow the laws. Conservatives have long complained about regulations being excessive and hindering economic development. This has led to legal challenges to the scope of the authority of federal agencies to apply and interpret the law.
Counter to this argument is that regulations are written in blood. Laws are written and regulations applying those laws often arise to correct some wrong or harm. For example, the FDA was created to prohibit commerce of “adulterated and misbranded food and drugs.” The argument to justify such government intervention in the market is simple: the free market is not good at stopping unscrupulous actors from making people sick, taking their money, or killing them. Consumers can only react to bad food or medicine by not buying it after they have heard of others getting sick or dying. Similarly, for example, banking laws and regulations exist to make banking safer for account holders.
As for “never approved by Congress,” then, the statement is misleading, as it implies that the Biden administration did something Congress forbade. In reality, it is well within the normal operations of the executive branch to interpret and apply laws in ways that Congress did not explicitly anticipate but did not explicitly rule out. It should also be noted that Project 2025 aims to greatly enhance the powers of a conservative executive branch to do things that Congress does not explicitly endorse and may even disapprove of.
As for raising fuel economy requirements, the reality is more complicated than Furchtgott-Roth implies. For example, the Biden administration backtracked. Second, the fuel economy standards were relatively modest and carried benefits such as reduced fuel costs. The incremental fuel economy rules can realistically be met. While eventually America’s love affair with big, gas-guzzling vehicles may come to an end, Biden’s rules would merely act as an incentive. They are not draconian.
As for “force the auto industry…and compel Americans to accept costly EVs [via a] scheme,” there is no force or compulsion involved in incentivizing a shift away from ICE vehicles and to electric ones. People are as free to keep old cars on the road, and to buy ICE vehicles, as ever. The market is currently addressing the cost issue as increasing sales and availability of used electric vehicles lowers prices. And, of course, a public policy shift (not a scheme) away from fossil fuel use is of very great public benefit to everyone. As for the “expense” of legacy automakers, they are as free to respond to market forces as any other automaker, and they have done so. As of this writing, BMW, Hyundai, Chevrolet, Fiat, Ford, General Motors, Kia, Volkswagen, RAM, Acura, and Dodge are among the more established automakers that are producing electric vehicles.
Furchtgott-Roth’s recommendations for the DOT may be reviewed in detail elsewhere on this website, but suffice it to say that she, like other authors of the Mandate for Leadership, favors fossil fuels over renewable energy and has a history of favoring a narrow, ideological view of policy over more empirical and realistic one.
