Obama, yesterday:

When you start seeing massive lobbying efforts backed by fossil fuel interests, or conservative think tanks, or the Koch brothers pushing for new laws to roll back renewable energy standards or prevent new clean energy businesses from succeeding — that’s a problem. That’s not the American way. That’s not progress. That’s not innovation. That’s rent seeking and trying to protect old ways of doing business and standing in the way of the future.

When Obama says the Koch brothers are trying to “prevent new clean energy businesses from succeeding,” he means they think that the solar investment tax credit should phase out as scheduled. The federal income tax credit is worth 30 percent of the entire installed solar system, and is scheduled to expire at the end of 2016; then it shrinks to 10 percent and only applies to commercial properties.

President Obama wants the tax credit to remain in place… forever.

Only in Obama’s mind is trying to let a special tax credit worth billions phase out as scheduled count as “rent seeking.”

The head of the Solar Energy Industries Association claims that the end of the credit could mean the loss of 100,000 jobs. (The group claims the solar industry has created 150,000 jobs since then.) If two-thirds of an industry’s job can be wiped out by the loss of a tax credit… doesn’t that indicate that it can only survive as long as it is getting special treatment under the tax code? And if the solar industry needs a big, special tax credit to make their products competitive with non-solar energy providers… aren’t they doing the rent-seeking?