McConnell: Administration policy is higher fuel prices, fewer jobs

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) lays the truth on the line--the policy of the Obama adminstration adds up to higher fuel prices and fewer jobs.

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell delivered the following remarks on the Senate floor Thursday regarding the effects of the Administration’s energy policies on the price at the pump and American jobs:

Throughout the week, I’ve pointed out that our nation faces a day of reckoning on entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, and I’ve expressed my disappointment about the White House’s failure to lead on reforms that would save these programs at an opportune moment like our own.

The best time to solve the kind of fiscal crisis we face is when the two parties share power in Washington. Everyone knows we either address these problems together, or they won’t be addressed at all. And everyone knows the President has to take the lead. That’s why presidents from both parties have done just that during periods of divided government in the past. And that’s why many of us are calling on this President to do the same for the good of the country today.

But when it comes to job creation, the President isn’t just failing to lead. In many cases, he’s actually blocking the way. And nowhere is this more evident than in the area of energy exploration.

Americans looking at the price of gas at the pump these days are justifiably upset. What they may not realize is that some in the Administration are actively working to prevent us from increasing our own oil production here at home.

So this morning, with gas prices on the rise, I’d like to just step back for a minute and quickly review what the Administration is doing to inhibit energy production right here at home. Taken together, it would be a pretty long list, including delays and suspensions and revocations and outright cancelations of lease permits — which translates to higher prices and fewer American jobs. So I’ll just list a few of the highlights.

The Administration started by cancelling oil and gas leases for domestic exploration. Immediately after taking office, the Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, cancelled 77 oil and gas leases in the state of Utah. One year later, the Administration suspended 61 more leases, this time in Montana. Shortly after cancelling the Utah leases, Secretary Salazar extended the public comment period for new offshore drilling by another six months, dragging an already-lengthy process out even further.

Then, immediately after the Gulf oil spill began last April, the Administration imposed a six-month moratorium on offshore drilling in the Gulf even as it cancelled energy exploration that was set to take place thousands of miles away in the Arctic Ocean. Two federal courts on three separate occasions have declared the moratorium in the Gulf unjust.

The Administration has ignored them. It’s kept the ban in place despite these rulings, forcing the drillers who’ve been affected by it to relocate their rigs — and the thousands of good-paying jobs they supported — to other parts of the world.

So if you’re wondering where the jobs are, a good place to start is the Administration’s efforts to block American energy exploration.

Senator Murkowski points out that U.S. oil reserves at just three known sources in Alaska could replace crude oil imports from the Persian Gulf for nearly 65 years. Yet all three are off-limits due to decisions made by or continued by this Administration.

Behind all these actions is a disconnect. At a time when gas prices are climbing higher and higher, pinching pocketbooks and threatening an economic recovery, Democrats in Washington would rather ignore the fact that Americans will remain dependent on fossil fuels for decades to come.

But we shouldn’t be surprised by it.

Two months before the President was elected, the man he ended up choosing as his Energy Secretary told a reporter how he’d go about reducing America’s dependence on oil. `Somehow,’ he said, `we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.’ And if that was the strategy, Secretary Chu seems to be getting his wish.

And the Administration is doing just about everything it can do to keep them there.

Now is the time to be asking what we can do to increase domestic energy production, not proposing ways to squeeze American families even more. And that’s why all of these actions by the Administration, along with a tax hike on energy production some have proposed that will only be passed on to consumers in the form of even higher gas prices, is the last thing Americans need right now. We should be looking for ways to lighten the burden on American families, not saddling them with a ‘minivan tax.’

There's a better approach.

Rather than squeezing the public and killing jobs with artificially higher prices, we should be looking for ways to increase domestic production even as we promote alternative sources of energy for the future.

An all-of-the-above approach to energy production — and the jobs that come with it — of the kind Republicans have been advocating for years would capitalize on the abundant resources we already have right here at home while at the same time looking for alternative sources of energy and new technologies that will free us from our dependence on fossil fuels down the road.

This is the responsible approach.

It protects existing jobs and creates new ones at a time when Americans need them.

It would reduce our dependence on foreign sources of oil.

It honors the concerns Americans have right now about the rising price of gas, and it respects the reality that most of the cars in this country will run on gas for many years to come.

But higher prices at the pump and fewer American jobs is the wrong answer.

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