Sep 18 2008
Some Thoughts on The House “Comprehensive” Energy & Global Warming Bill
We’re hearing lots of people in the Beltway going bananas over the House bill, 6899, becoming known as the “don’t drill bill.” The AP has some background on the top-line points of the plan. We thought we’d share some thoughts:
Carter Wood at NAM’s Shopfloor first notes some procedural hanky-panky: “One of the recurring complaints from opponents of the House leadership’s energy legislation during yesterday’s debate was that H.R. 6899 was a 290-page bill first made public at 9:45 p.m. the evening before the vote.” But more fundamentally, he raises this serious concern over un-serious items stuck in the bill that the AP seemed to miss:
… of course the federal government should use a carbon-omitting tax code to encourage bicyclists and vanpoolers to commute to their jobs at wave-energy plants. In fact, we mark today as Constitution Day to celebrate that all-encompassing federal involvement in our daily lives.
Jibes aside, inclusion of these kind of provisions, no matter their individual merits, demonstrates a fundamental unseriousness about energy legislation. Congress has placed extreme and unnecessary limits on the production of domestic energy, raising its cost and making the United States ever more dependent on foreign suppliers of oil and natural gas. Any legislation that does not address that basic policy failure is a distraction, hardly deserving the title of “energy” bill.
Investors Business Daily sums up their view thusly: “House Democrats have passed an “oil drilling bill” that bans drilling where most of the oil is. President Bush and congressional Republicans — especially John McCain — can’t let them get away with it.” (They also ask a pressing question as it relates to oil and trade with Columbia)
Meanwhile, the Boston Globe reports that a last-minute addition to the bill would take away yet another available source of domestic drilling.
As you might imagine, the American Petroleum Institute has some facts on why Pelosi’s is a bad bill: 80 percent of available resources on the outer continental shelf remain off-limits plus $18 billion in new taxes. What’s not to love?
Pelosi is just taking a lesson from Palin, tax big oil, give it to the people and they will love you. Is it OK for republicans to do, but not democrats?
Once the planet is converted to hydrogen we will look back and wonder why it took so long. I think history will show that oil profits drove policy.
Taking it to a logical conclusion, the survivability factor for all intelligence on any world may come down to this one simple formula, does the sewage of your society bring you down, or does it power you to the stars.
Its one or the other.
Pelosi is very very sneaky.
We to really drill for oil and build new refineries and dismiss this global warming crap
It’s a horrible and deliberate lie the democrats just gave to the american people with this bill.
[...] at The Chilling Effect, which also points us to Heritage’s [...]