I went to the House again today to listen to the debate on energy. The Republicans are still speaking on the need to use our own resources and to allow drilling off our coasts and in federal lands for oil and natural gas. They will continue to argue this message on the House floor this week and during the Republican National Convention. There was a poster on display asking people to call Nancy Pelosi at 202-224-3121. The general theme was …Congress should get back to work and have a vote on a real energy plan, not just play games by providing taxpayer money to federal employees to commute to work or to demand that oil companies get oil out of the federal lands they are already leasing. (They are if it exists and if it is economically feasible.)
I arrived to hear Reps. Rob Bishop (R-Utah), William Thornberry (R-Texas), Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.), Mike Pence (R-Ind.), and Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) speak on the need to have a vote on more domestic energy exploration and development for fossil fuels, including oil shale, in federal lands. They said we should use the royalties to research alternative energy sources, provide incentives to encourage conservation, and to increase our infrastructure such as building more refineries, pipe lines and to update and expand our electrical grid.
Rep. Rob Bishop reminded taxpayers that rich people only use about 11 percent of their income for energy so they can afford to write a check to a cap and trade firm to “pay for” their energy use and carbon footprint. But low income people can use as much as 50 percent of their income to pay for energy, so they cannot write a similar check. Of course, cap and trade is all based on a questionable theory that man is causing global warming.
Rep. Pence related a quote of Daniel Webster that is just above the Speaker’s chair in the House of Representatives that certainly is relevant today. It says, ”Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests to see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered.”
Rep. Gohmert closed out the session by asking all of us to sing “God Bless America” and we did. A fitting end to this day’s debate.
Filed under: Pork
