I just finished watching the Sunday morning political talkies, and the second biggest ad buy of the day was in support of H.R. 1380, the NAT GAS Act, legislation that was produced by billionaire T. Boone Pickens to benefit the natural gas industry. T. Boone Pickens is a major player in the natural gas industry, so he basically made H.R. 1380 to make himself richer. That’s why this blog has referred to H.R. 1380 variously as the “Pickens Your Pocket Boondoggle Bill,” and the “T. Boone Pickens Earmark Plan.”

The advertisements I saw left me troubled. They indicated that T. Boone Pickens is less tone deaf, and therefore potentially more successful, than the last time he tried to get the Congress to enact legislation that he wrote to further enrich himself.

That was the 2008 “Pickens Plan,” and it was even bigger rip-off than H.R. 1380. The “Pickens Plan” was a simple four-step strategy: (1) subsidize wind produced by T. Boone; (2) subsidize transmission towers to deliver T. Boone’s wind power to cities; (3) force Americans to buy wind power produced by T. Boone; (4) force American motorists to fill their cars with T. Boone’s “leftover” natural gas, the stuff that was displaced by T. Boone’s wind power.

The first time around, T. Boone Pickens thought he had all his bases covered. He’d long been a big GOP donor, so he had that going for him. He relied on Democrats’ reflexive support for unreliable, expensive “green” energy like wind. Just to be sure, he supported their campaign coffers, too. Finally, he had a great public relations hook: “energy independence.” He could show videos of American flag burning in the Middle East and promise to wean the U.S. off Saudi crude with T. Boone’s wind and gas.

It was a great plan…with one fatal flaw. T. Boone Pickens branded his Plan with his face! He actually labeled his self-enrichment scheme the “Pickens Plan.” A lot gets past the American electorate, but they are intrinsically suspicious of legislation written by billionaires. It was too obvious a huge special interest payoff. And so it failed.

The ads I saw this morning were ALL burning flags, and ZERO T. Boone Pickens. This worries me, because it’s a much more effective pitch than, “billionaire T. Boone Pickens deserves even more money.”

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.

Next week, the Senate may vote on a bill being pushed by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to take away federal subsidies for the oil industry.  Nick Loris and Curtis Dubay of the Heritage Foundation sort out what is and is not a subsidy in the Senate bill here.  Suffice it to say, the big ticket items are not subsidies to the oil and gas industry, but standard business deductions.  David Kreutzer, also of the Heritage Foundation, compares the subsidies that the oil industry gets to the immensely larger subsidies that the wind power industry gets.  No one claims that the Senate bill will lower gas prices.

Getting off the Boonedoggle Bandwagon

The first sign appeared this week that the burgeoning bandwagon in the House of Representatives to pass what I have called the T. Boone Pickens Earmark Bill is slowing down.  Rep. Steve Pearce (R-NM) removed his name as a co-sponsor of H. R. 1380, the NAT GAS Act (which stands for New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions).  Pearce deserves extra credit for doing this because the biggest industry in his southern New Mexico district is oil and natural gas production.

T. Boone Pickens wrote a letter published in the Wall Street Journal on 11th May in response to a devastating column by Holman Jenkins in the 7th May Journal.  Pickens writes that, “Since July 2008 I have spent more than $80 million of my own money…” to pass the Pickens Plan.  This $80 million figure does not include the many millions of dollars Pickens has contributed to Republican candidates and the Republican Party over the decades. If enacted, the bill would probably increase the value of Pickens’s natural gas holdings by several billion dollars.  So $80 million could turn out to be a very good investment.

The opponents of H. R. 1380, which include Freedom Action, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Americans for Tax Reform, and Americans for Prosperity (all members of the Cooler Heads Coalition), have probably spent in the neighborhood of $800 to defeat the Pickens-Your-Pocket Plan.  That expenditure could save American taxpayers close to $10 billion in federal subsidies to the natural gas and natural gas vehicle manufacturing industries over the next five years.  That’s even better value for money.

On Thursday, the Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee of the House Transportation Committee held a hearing on “Environmental Protection Agency Mining Policies: Assault on Appalachia.” Video and written testimony are available here. For detailed descriptions of the EPA’s outrageous war on Appalachian coal production, click here, here, or here. Suffice it to say, EPA has subverted the Administrative Procedures Act to enact a de facto moratorium on mining. It engineered a new Clean Water Act “pollutant,” saline effluent, which the EPA claims degrades water quality downstream from mines by harming a short lived insect that isn’t an endangered species. The hearing yesterday was part 1; next Wednesday, the subcommittee is scheduled to hear from EPA administrator Lisa Jackson.

It was a bipartisan bashing. The only Democrat to show up was Ranking Member Rep. Nick Rahall (WV), whose opposition to the EPA exceeds that of Republicans, due to the fact that his State is the largest coal producer in Appalachia, and is, therefore, harmed most.

For the “Part 1″ hearing on Thursday, the primary topic was the EPA’s procedural shenanigans. For part two next week, with Administrator Lisa Jackson, I very much hope they address the EPA’s shoddy science on the ecological impact of mountaintop mining.

The star of the show was Rep. John J. Duncan (R-TN). Either he is an incredible speaker, or he has a great stump speech about “environmental extremism.” He said that his district used to produce 12 million tons of coal every year. Now, he said it produces 2 million tons annually. He noted how environmentalists tend to be the upper middle class, while environmentalist policies hurt the poorest the most. It was a great speech.

Kentucky Energy and Environment Secretary Dr. Leonard K. Peters said something very interesting during the hearing. He claimed that EPA Region 4, which serves Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee, was amenable to Kentucky’s concerns about the unreasonableness of the EPA’s Appalachian coal crackdown, but that the federal office would not budge. If true, this is a damning indicator of how the Obama administration is willing to harm Appalachia economically in order to sate its coastal environmentalist base.