Washington Free Beacon reporter Elizabeth Harrington analyzed the Obama administration's expenditures on ineffective climate change resolutions and outdated transportation technology Friday on Varney and Co.
Host Stuart Varney began by introducing a report Harrington wrote on the Obama administration's recent climate change initiative.
"President Obama's climate change plan could cost upwards of $45 billion a year while reducing global temperatures less than two-tenths of 1 percent," Varney said. "When we implement those policies, it will reduce the global temperature by what? 0.2 degrees? Have I got it right?"
"Yes, basically. The proposal for Paris is only going to change [the temperature] 0.01 degrees," Harrington said, adding that the $45 billion plan "still does not even crack two-tenths of a degree."
Varney was shocked.
"Wait a minute. That is one-hundredth of one degree celsius," he said.
Harrington said the administration is trying to make it so the next president cannot change the legislation.
"The administration officials have admitted that they are going to use existing laws already on the book," she said. "[They will] go through regulations in order to make these changes, and not let the next administration, whether it be a Republican or Democrat, be able to change it."
She listed the Clean Power Plan rule as an example and said that the administration is circumventing Congress to implement the plan.
Varney then asked Harrington about another article, in which she wrote that the Department of Transportation is spending $500 million on "bike paths, street car projects, and solar panel rest stops."
"This is the Tiger Grant program through the Department of Transportation which started through the stimulus back in 2009," she said. "We have not been able to get rid of it."
Harrington said that while not all $500 million are going toward the technology Varney mentioned, "a big portion of it is."
"There's a $13 million bicycle boulevard in Hawaii, there's the $9 million solar panel rest stop in Rhode Island," she said.
She said that this technology, while expensive, is outdated.
"The Secretary of Transportation mentioned that these grants are about the future, but millions and millions are going to bicycles and streetcar technology that was invented in the 19th century," she said.