Congress should let the US government go idle for lack of funding if that’s what’s necessary to stop the Obama administration from creating an energy crisis.
Spouting characteristically lunatic reasons, White House advisors on Oct. 7 said they’d recommend a veto of legislation lifting the obsolete ban on exports of crude oil. On Oct. 9, the House of Representatives passed just such a bill.
Congress can exploit the conflict for horse-trading on other issues. Or it can keep the bill clean and make Obama act on the veto threat.
It should follow the latter course.
In a policy statement, the Office of Management and Budget defined the ideological stakes. Instead of lifting the export ban, it said, “Congress should be focusing its efforts on supporting our transition to a low-carbon economy.” For example, it should end “the billions of dollars a year in federal subsidies provided to oil companies.”
This parrots the manifesto of environmental extremism.
Also on Oct. 7, USA Today ran an article by Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune complaining, “Lifting the ban on exports would send a signal that America is ready to double down on dirty, 19th century fuels when we should instead be investing more in the clean and renewable energy sources that are our future and leaving dirty sources in the ground as much as possible.”
This is the formula for what Europeans call energy poverty, in which energy costs account for painfully high shares of household budgets. The problem has reached politically unsettling proportions in Europe, where governments have driven up energy costs by implementing the agenda advocated by Brune and the White House.
The program would be doubly costly in the US. Not only would energy costs jump, but the country also would deny itself wealth from development of unconventional resources.
Resort to populist nonsense about “subsidies provided to oil companies” shows how eager the administration is to dodge real-world challenge to its state-centered energy fantasies.
Clearly and strongly, Congress needs to act.
(From the subscription area of www.ogj.com, posted Oct. 9, 2015; author’s e-mail: [email protected])