Wealth & Money Quote by Jim Costa

“Bankrupt” is a deliberately loaded word for an energy debate, because it yanks the conversation out of the abstract and plants it in the harshest language American voters understand: failure you can’t paper over. Jim Costa, a California Democrat who represents an agricultural-heavy district, isn’t just critiquing a regulatory framework. He’s accusing the system of being out of money, out of ideas, and out of legitimacy all at once.

The specific intent is pressure. Calling a policy “bankrupt” signals urgency and invites a reset: new permitting rules, different incentives, more domestic production, more grid investment, some blend of all of it. It’s a rhetorical crowbar meant to pry open coalition politics where energy is usually trapped between climate ambition and price anxiety.

The subtext is about trade-offs politicians often avoid naming. “Current energy policy” becomes a catchall for high utility bills, volatile gas prices, slow infrastructure buildout, and the sense that ordinary people are paying for contradictions elites haven’t resolved. In a state like California, that can also imply frustration with a clean-energy transition that is popular in principle but punishing in execution: expensive housing electrification, strained transmission, wildfire-driven insurance and power shutoffs. “Bankrupt” hints not just at fiscal waste, but at a moral deficit - promises made without a credible plan to deliver reliable, affordable power.

Context matters: as a politician, Costa is speaking in a world where energy is never only energy. It’s jobs, water, farming costs, air quality, and geopolitical leverage. The line works because it compresses a sprawling policy mess into a single verdict that sounds like common sense - and dares opponents to argue with the ledger.