President Obama in his May 15 weekly radio address called on the Interior Department to expand oil and gas drilling in both the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska. But an examination of the president’s leadership on energy policy quickly provides a bleak assessment at best. Voters nationwide continue to voice concern about rising energy costs. With an economy slow to recover and unemployment still much higher than what the president promised during his stimulus pitch, anger aimed at Washington over gasoline approaching $4 a gallon is well placed.
Yet what has the president done up until now? Well, he’s been in Brazil urging South America’s largest economy to produce more oil — via offshore drilling; simultaneously in the United States he’s pushed the Environmental Protection Agency to enact burdensome regulations that will disproportionately affect growth and investment.
And perhaps worst of all, he is leading the charge to indirectly punish American consumers by penalizing America’s oil and gas companies with higher taxes, which he incorrectly deems “subsidies.” The president and his allies in the Congress would be well-served to re-examine their calls to levy new taxes during a time of much needed investment for the sake of our recovery.
Chief Justice John Marshall’s eternal admonition, “the power to tax is the power to destroy,” comes to mind when anti-fossil-fuel zealots suggest this agenda. Is this the endgame regarding domestic production of oil and gas, destruction?
The president has chosen to ride populist and misinformed discontent over gasoline prices and very profitable quarters for energy producers instead of exemplifying true leadership.
Our economic turnaround requires tough choices and the president should lead without fear of retribution from his out-of-touch liberal base. If taxes are raised on oil companies, prices at the pump will not go down.
In fact the only things we could then look forward to are fewer jobs for American workers, stronger oil companies in Venezuela and Russia and an energy future further jeopardized.
A White House calling for higher energy taxes while at the same time claiming new drilling will commence just doesn’t jibe. We need to be promoting our domestic ability to provide energy — of all sources — right here at home, so that we continue to have access to the affordable energy we need to power our economy and live our lives. Every other nation in the world does it, from Cuba to China. Why don’t we?
You will hear continuing talk in the coming weeks about the “unfair” “subsidies” that our oil and gas companies receive. If you bypass the spin and sound bites, however, the actual facts paint a totally different picture.
For example, the Department of Energy just released numbers showing that, while the nuclear and renewable energy industries receive federal research and development funds amounting to $1.65 billion in a single year, the oil and gas industry received just $39 million. That doesn’t look like the oil and gas industry getting away with highway robbery against the American people .
Each day, America’s oil and gas industry hands over more than $86 million inside the Beltway in the form of tax, rent and royalty payments. As if this wasn’t enough, Obama not only continues to bully the country into wind and solar, but also uses the debt crisis as a political smokescreen.
What he ought to do is make the tough choices needed to cut unnecessary government programs. That’s real leadership. Unfairly targeting an industry that is politically unpopular does not fit the bill.
John Hofmeister, former president of Royal Dutch Shell’s U.S. operation, may have put it best when he stated, “We can’t sustain an initiative from one political cycle to the next.”
That’s surely been the case so far. But that does not excuse this president — one who promised a new way of doing business in our nation’s capital — from failing to provide our nation with a clear and comprehensive plan for our energy future.
Niger Innis is the national spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality.
