GOP to Obama: This is ‘All-of-the-Above’ Energy
On the heels of a multi-state blitz by the GOP’s House Energy Action Team, Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) will today introduce his party’s answer to President Obama’s “all of the above” energy strategy.
The Domestic Energy and Jobs Act is a package of bills — all of which passed out of committee with bipartisan support — intended to spur job growth while lowering energy costs.
It also does the dual duty of taking the energy fight to Democrats in the campaign season and taking the steam out of Obama’s avowed support for oil, gas and coal as part of the equation.
“Last Friday’s abysmal employment report should be a wake-up call to the President and Senate Democrats,” McCarthy said. “They cannot continue to sit on their hands while 13 million Americans remain out of work. The Domestic Energy and Jobs Act will help job creators in the energy industry invest more in American-made energy and American-made jobs.”
McCarthy will make the morning rounds on CNBC, CNN and Fox to announce the bill before the formal unveiling of the legislation with the rest of the HEAT team at a 3 p.m. press conference (UPDATE: Video).
The package includes Rep. Cory Gardner’s (R-Colo.) Strategic Energy Production Act of 2012, which would require the administration to formulate a plan for new energy leases on federal land — with production output equal to that which is sapped from the reserve — if it decides to dip into the SPR.
Gardner, who is reportedly a co-sponsor on McCarthy’s bill, told PJM back in April that he wouldn’t put it past Obama to draw from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve if needed in an election year. “It’s a trend with this president who’s willing to do anything for politics,” he said.
It also includes Rep. Ed Whitfield’s (R-Ky.) Gasoline Regulations Act of 2012, which would freeze new EPA regulations that are expected to drive up pump prices; Rep. Scott Tipton’s (R-Colo.) Planning for American Energy Act of 2012, which would make the Interior Secretary develop an all-of-the-above plan that includes fossil fuels as well as renewables; Rep. Mike Coffman’s (R-Colo.) Providing Leasing Certainty for American Energy Act of 2012, which would implement a minimum acreage leasing plan and speed up the leasing process; Rep. Doug Lamborn’s (R-Colo.) Streamlining Permitting of American Energy Act, which would dial back the red tape for energy developers; Rep. Doc Hastings’ (R-Wash.) National Petroleum Reserve Alaska Access Act; and Rep. Bill Johnson’s (R-Ohio) BLM Live Internet Auctions Act.
The bill is likely to be followed by some sort of pushback from Obama, who visited an Iowa wind farm in response to the Republicans’ recess energy tour.
Post-recess, Washington was hit by the news that the unemployment rate had ticked back up to 8.2 percent amid disappointing job growth.
“This legislation has the potential to spur the economic growth that will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs and bring down gas prices from the ‘new normal’ of $3.50 per gallon, the current national average,” McCarthy said. “By working together, we can empower innovators to harness our domestic energy capabilities using new technologies.”
“This will help put our country back on the road to recovery by creating jobs and growing our economy,” the Whip added.
“The bill is likely to be followed by some sort of pushback from Obama, who visited an Iowa wind farm in response to the Republicans’ recess energy tour.”
I’m so sick of wind farms. I wish they would just blow away. They’re expensive, noisy, kill a lot of birds, and don’t produce anywhere near the amount of energy that’s required to supply a small town, let alone a huge city. Even T. Boone Pickens gave up on the idea, citing enormous costs in getting the electricity to where it was really needed. We have enough coal, oil, and natural gas in this country to last us over 100 years. But it’s jerks like Obama and his enviro-Nazi base that’s preventing us from taking advantage of it. Hopefully, a Romney administration and a Republican majority in Congress will change all that and bring more jobs to this nation. Just another reason to throw Obama and his minions out of office.
when obozo’s green energy, wind farms and solar, can fly a 747 come back to me.
Those are all good initiatives and should be implemented. But until they also include the Open Fuel Standards Act it will be clear that we are not serious about “all if the above”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Fuel_Standard_Act_of_2011
Oil & natural gas leases bring in dollars to the federal treasury. Wind & solar subsidies take money out. Plus, more people working means more in income tax revenue.
Well stated. Concise and short.
What took them so long?
There’s no hurry. This is politics, not legislation. It will pass the House, and it won’t pass the Senate (Dems won’t allow the ‘Bamster to be embarrassed by a bill like this, and so they’ll filibuster). Being a campaign issue, that means it only needs to be timed for maximum November effect.
Lessons from this? Vote for your Republican Congressman, your Republican Senate candidate and for Mitt Romney. And vote for Republicans in your statehouse races, as well. We can tolerate a vote for a libertarian IF it’s a city counsel or county sheriff or coroner race.
And how many Americans will hear about this bill! I even subscribe to a relatively conservative newspaper and it won’t be highlighted, or perhaps even written about. As long as the media is full of liberal bias and Americans clueless they shall remain…..clueless..that’s a more PC word than the one I want to use.
I await the reading of this bill, since none of the discussions to date mention the position on nuclear. Given the Fukushima environmental disaster, nuclear power as it exists today should be laid to rest in it’s sarcophagus. With the plants themselves serving as waste storage depots, each one is a disaster waiting to happen. Here in California, we have San Onofre, built backwards from the actual design, currently shut down due to cracks in retrofitted piping (which I hope was not imported from China, like the San Francisco Bay Bridge repair). It sits practically on top of an active fault, and stores it’s waste on prem. It is interesting to see wealthy conservatives uniting with liberals on the necessity of keeping this Godzilla from reopening. We have a gas fired plant in Redondo Beach that is under multiple attack. Developers want the land for condos, those who bought condos next to it want it out of their backyard, and eco groups just want it out. I hope the pending legislation protects those clean gas burning plants we already have, given that the power industry seems more interested in extracting maximum profit from current facilities than investing in new ones. They seemingly find it more profitable, at least in California, to invest in subsidized windmill farms. Of course, considering how long it would take to wade thru green tape in California to actually build a new gas plant, I am probably being unfair in my assessment. When the subsidies are stalled, the windfarms fall into disrepair. With our current green fascist governor, they are once again sprouting on hillsides.
Those nuke plants are the Model-T’s of nuclear energy. Plant design has evolved incredibly since then. France gets most of its energy from Nuclear plants.
I’m all for natural gas (would love to see our cars run on it like the buses) but we need all of it.
Come back after you have at least a rudimentary knowledge of nuclear physics. I’m sick of know-nothings lecturing nuclear engineers like me about how dangerous nuclear power is. Fukushima was done in by the combination of an earthquake and a tsunami. As long as the plant isn’t along the ocean, there is no danger of tsunami. Even so, Fukushima’s consequences are dwarfed by the tsunami itself. 20,000 people died from the tsunami, but you can count on one hand the number who died at Fukushima.
“If I wanted America to fail”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ-4gnNz0vc
It must be election season if the stupid Pubs are actually doing something instead of just quietly moaning about it.
They’re such scummy wusses.
But I suppose we’re stuck with them. The Dems have simply gone clean over the edge into soem alternate universe. See! All those drugs at Woodstock finally came home to roost. They’ve lost their minds completely!
I’m a bit disappointed that the “big GOP energy bill” didn’t include doing some obvious things about the economy, e.g., close the EPA and Department of Energy. EPA was created by executive order – Presidential fiat – pretending to ‘delegate’ to that agency the authority to write laws and then enforce those laws. Yes, I know they’re called “regulations” or “rules”, but they’re identical to laws because (1) The regulated parties have to obey them and (2) those who violate them are punished. In addition, to add insult to injury, there isn’t very much due process in the enforcement of those rules nor in the punishment of offenders. Why, you ask? Simple: President = Executive Branch; Executive Branch has no law-making authority (read the Constitution; duty is to “faithfully execute the laws”) and so creating an new agency with the power to write laws is ultra vires … beyond his powers. But, of course, that’s a “radical right-wing” idea, isn’t it? Rather than being a “radical left-wing” idea like, for instance, a branch of the government with no Constitutional authority to make laws creating a new agency and giving it power to make laws. “Oh, but Congress didn’t fuss about it!!” Neither did Congress do anything about the attack on Libya by U.S. military forces without a declaration of war nor even a pretense of following the War Powers Act. Core idea of the the U.S. Constitution is that the federal government has three branches and one makes the laws and one executes the laws and one interprets the laws without any overlap. That’s why it’s called the “Executive” Branch, you see?
When is the DOE going to release the surplus weapons-grade uranium for downblending.