Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell swiped at President Obama this week for comments he made in the course of calling for a significant reduction in oil imports.
Obama, outlining his new energy “blueprint,” said he wants to slash Americans’ dependence on foreign oil by as much as one-third. But McConnell claimed that this is mere posturing by the administration, which he suggested was positively disinterested in taking basic steps that would enable the U.S. to become energy independent.
According to McConnell, “Over the past two years, the administration has undertaken what can only be described as a war on American energy. It’s cancelled dozens of drilling leases. It’s declared a moratorium on drilling off the Gulf Coast. It’s increased permit fees. It has prolonged public comment periods. In short, it’s done just about everything it can to keep our own energy sector from growing. As a result, thousands of U.S. workers have lost their jobs, as companies have been forced to look elsewhere for a better business climate.”
McConnell indicated that he sees limited prospects for bipartisan support for a strategy designed to deliver energy independence, saying “Tell a Democrat in Washington that gas prices are too high, and, as if on cue, they’ll throw together a speech or a press conference to suggest that we open an underground oil reserve that was created to deal with calamities, not market pressures; they’ll take you on a tour of some alternative car plant that promises to have one of its $100,000 prototypes to market 25 years down the road; or they’ll quietly release some report to the media about how energy companies aren’t working hard enough to extract oil — while schizophrenically claiming American reserves are minuscule and that more production isn’t the solution.”
In his speech, Obama said, “I’m setting a new goal: . . . When I was elected to this office, America imported 11 million barrels of oil a day. By a little more than a decade from now, we will have cut that by one-third.” But Leader McConnell also said he would like to know how that fits with Obama’s comments last week in Brazil. “Just last week he told Brazilians that he hopes America becomes a major customer of Brazilian oil,” McConnell noted. “Well, which is it?”
Much of the Senate Minority Leader’s critique seems to center on the fact that energy policy is not being designed with customers in mind. “The guy who’s trying to make ends meet wants to know what you’re going to do for him today, not 24 years from now. But, of course, the administration doesn’t have anything to say to that guy, because the administration’s energy policy isn’t really aimed at him. If it were, then the administration wouldn’t be locking down domestic energy sources. It wouldn’t be looking to pass new regulations through the EPA that will impose a national energy tax on every business large and small. It wouldn’t be telling our allies in Brazil that while it’s great that they’ve found oil off their coast, those who want to search for oil off our coasts and on our mainland can’t. And it wouldn’t be telling job creators in the energy industry to go look elsewhere.”
Support remains among top Democrats for measures aimed at selectively raising taxes on oil and gas companies by nixing basic tax provisions aimed at enabling American companies to remain competitive against foreign corporations and continuing to employ American workers in manufacturing and other production industries.
Obama’s and McConnell’s comments come as gas prices continue to rise across the country, hitting a national average of $3.58 per gallon last week, according to AAA.
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