The ironically-named Center for American Progress posted a blog by Daniel Weiss and Stewart Boss this week that argues that conservative groups are opposing the T. Boone Pickens Earmark bill (H. R. 1380) that would provide subsidies to Big Natural Gas on the grounds that subsidies distort the market, while at the same time the same groups are defending subsidies to Big Oil. For the record, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, for which I work, opposes all subsidies and mandates. These include subsidies to oil companies. The claim that groups like CEI support tax subsidies for oil companies is based on the ridiculous re-definition by the left of standard business deductions taken by all companies as tax subsidies when taken by oil companies.
Weiss’s lengthy blog is predictably inane. But it is obtuse even by the standards of the Center for American Progress. Big Oil and Big Natural Gas are one and the same. BP America is the largest producer of natural gas in the United States. Exxon Mobil owns the world’s largest privately-owned reserves of natural gas. Thus, by supporting multi-billion dollar taxpayer subsidies for natural gas, the Center for American Progress have convicted themselves of being in the pocket of the oil and gas industry. They are almost certainly being paid off by T. Boone Pickens to flack for the Pickens-Your-Pockets Plan.
The National Chamber Foundation’s Campaign for Free Enterprise has announced that Jeffrey Immelt will be the keynote speaker at their Jobs for America Summit on July 11 at the U. S. Chamber of Commerce. Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, is America’s leading crony capitalist and promoter of cap-and-trade legislation. No word on whether the speakers will include fellow cap-and-trade promoters Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, and John Bryson, former CEO of Edison International, whom President Obama has nominated to be Secretary of Commerce. These proponents of energy-rationing polices are willing to raise energy prices and thereby make people poorer and destroy American jobs because they calculate that it will boost their companies’ profits.
President Barack Obama this week nominated John Bryson to be Secretary of Commerce. Senator James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) immediately announced that he would try to defeat Bryson’s confirmation by the Senate. It’s easy to see why Inhofe didn’t have to spend much time weighing Bryson’s qualifications. Bryson is a model crony capitalist, lifelong professional environmentalist, and leading promoter of cap-and-trade legislation to raise energy prices.
Here is what Bryson said at a symposium at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2009: “Greenhouse gas legislation – either with a tax or with a cap and trade, which is a more complicated way of getting at it, but it has the advantage politically of sort of hiding the fact that you have a tax, but at the same – you know that’s what you’re trying to do, trying to raise price of carbon….” He went on to say that the Waxman-Markey and other cap-and-trade bills in Congress would not raise energy prices enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the required amount, so that he also favored federal regulations, such as renewable requirements for electric utilities, on top of cap-and-trade. Later, Bryson referred to Waxman-Markey as a “moderate but acceptable bill.”
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Update on the Boondoggle Bandwagon
The controversy over the T. Boone Pickens Earmark Bill, H. R. 1380, continued to grow this week. Three more Republicans joined Rep. Steve Pearce (R-NM) in getting off the Boonedoggle Bandwagon and withdrew as co-sponsors. They are Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.), Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.), and Tim Griffin (R-Ark.). The complete list of 187 co-sponsors can be found here.
A joint letter organized by Heritage Action for America and signed by seventeen conservative organizations opposing the bill was sent to the Hill. Pickens himself published an op-ed co-authored by flack-for-hire Denise Bode in Politico that was full of his usual blend of self regard, bluster, and misinformation. Pickens and Bode claimed in the op-ed that the House Republican Study Committee has endorsed his bill. It has not, and Politico quickly corrected Pickens. They also claimed that wind power is now cheaper than new coal-fired power.
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After a five-month review, the Obama Administration announced this week that it had gotten rid of, was going to get rid of, or was considering getting rid of several dozen unnecessary regulations. The total savings could add up to several billions of dollars a year.
As part of the rollout, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it was reviewing 31 regulations for elimination. EPA also announced that it had suspended the new rules regulating milk spills under the Clean Water Act. That will save dairy farmers an estimated $146 million a year. Ending another regulation will save gas station owners $67 million a year.
This exercise indicates the level of contempt that President Barack Obama and his Administration have for the American people. They think that we are so stupid that they can fool us with some piddling trimming while they push full speed ahead with their regulatory onslaught. As Wayne Crews of CEI shows in Ten Thousand Commandments: an Annual Snapshot of the Regulatory State, the Obama Administration has over 4000 new regulations in the pipeline. The EPA is trying to raise energy prices for all Americans and destroy jobs by regulating greenhouse gas emissions. And EPA is also targeting specific industries, such as coal, with job-killing regulations.
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The 2012 presidential election is starting to bend some of the Obama Administration’s environmental and energy policies. I have noted previously that the White House realizes that gas prices are a huge threat to President Barack Obama’s re-election. Consequently, the President is trying to shift the blame to oil companies and speculators while at the same time talking up what his Administration is doing to increase domestic oil production. The reality, of course, is that the Obama Administration has moved across the board to decrease oil production in federal lands and offshore areas.
Another sign of the Administration’s focus on the President’s re-election is that the Environmental Protection Agency has suddenly started paying attention to the concerns of industry. The timetables for new regulations of coal ash disposal and of surface coal mining in Appalachia have been extended. EPA announced last week that it was reconsidering, but not delaying, some parts of its new Clean Air Act rule for cement plants. This week EPA suspended indefinitely a similar rule for industrial boilers that it had promulgated in February. EPA said that it will conduct more analyses and re-open the public comment period for the boiler rule.
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The Senate held votes this week on competing Democratic and Republican oil bills. The Democratic bill, S. 940, which would raise taxes on big oil companies, was defeated on a vote of 52 to 48. The Republican bill, S. 953, which would force the Obama Administration to increase offshore oil leasing, was defeated on a vote of 42 to 57. Under Senate rules, sixty votes were required to pass either measure.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had this to say about those who voted against the bill to raise taxes on the five largest oil companies: “They would rather cut college scholarships, slash cancer research, and end Medicare than take away taxpayer-funded giveaways to oil companies that are raking in billions of dollars in profits.” Three Democrats (Senators Mark Begich of Alaska, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, and Ben Nelson of Nebraska) voted against the oil tax hike, while the two Republican Senators from Maine (Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins) voted for it. And Senator James M. Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) had this to say about the Republican offshore bill: “The solution to skyrocketing gas prices is simple: increase supply.” The establishment media regularly try to portray Senator Reid as a statesman and Senator Inhofe as a conservative ideologue. These contrasting quotes allow readers to judge for themselves.
House Passes Offshore Drilling Bills
The House of Representatives this week and last passed three bills to force the Obama Administration to increase offshore oil and gas production. H. R. 1229 passed by a vote of 263 to 163, with 28 Democrats voting Yes. H. R. 1230 passed last week by 266 to 149, with 33 Democrats in favor. And H. R. 1231 passed the House 243 to 179, with the support of 21 Democrats.
All three bills were sponsored by Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), Chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee. You can read brief committee summaries of what is in the bills here, here, and here.
Naturally, the White House opposes all three bills. President Obama and his top energy and environmental officials support policies to raise gasoline and electricity prices for consumers.
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Representative Steve Pearce (R-New Mexico) yesterday removed his name as a co-sponsor of H. R. 1380, which I have dubbed the T. Boone Pickens Earmark Bill. Rep. Pearce is an outstanding conservative Member of Congress, who is policy oriented and held in high regard by his colleagues, so his defection from the Boonedoggle Bandwagon is an important sign that House conservatives may be starting to rethink their support. Pearce deserves special credit because the oil and gas industry, which would benefit from the Pickens-Your-Pocket Plan, is the largest industry in his southern New Mexico district.
Quebec, long an economic basket case kept afloat by Canada’s federal government, has decided to open up its northern interior to resource development. Quebec Premier Jean Charest announced on Monday an ambitious 25-year “Plan Nord” to build highways, airports, and other infrastructure so that the area can be developed.
According to Montreal’s Gazette, “Investments in energy development, mining, forestry, transportation, and tourism in the 1.2-million-square-kilometre region – twice the size of France – will create 20,000 jobs a year, generating $162 billion in growth and tax revenues of $14 billion.” Large parts of northern Quebec are heavily forested, and there are major deposits of iron, nickel, gold, platinum, cobalt, zinc, vanadium, and rare earths.
The Obama Administration should follow Quebec’s good example. The Department of the Interior and the U. S. Forest Service (an agency of the U. S. Department of Agriculture) control nearly 30% of the land in the United States, most of it in the West and Alaska, plus the Outer Continental Shelf. Federal lands and offshore areas contain colossal reserves of energy and minerals plus the most productive forests in the world. But the Obama Administration is locking up more and more federal lands and offshore areas in order to prevent oil and gas production, hardrock mining, and timber production. And they’re trying to block coal mining in Appalachia by inventing new pollutants to be regulated.
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