Bachmann American Energy Tour Conference Call
I just finished participating in Rep. Michele Bachmann’s conference call summarizing the “American Energy Tour” trip to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and to Alaska. The most bizarre question and followup was from the Pioneer Press’ Jim Ragsdale.
Rep. Bachmann used a word picture to describe the offlimits energy supplies in this way:
Picture the pantry being full of food and your children wanting to eat. Then picture that the pantry is locked. America has lots of energy but Congress has locked the pantry.
Mr. Ragsdale started by saying that he liked the picture, then asked this question:
“What if the pantry was full and the children were already overweight. Shouldn’t we keep that pantry locked?
Obviously, these aren’t verbatim quotes but they’re accurate depictions of what was said. Based on his question, I’d say that it isn’t a stretch to think that Mr. Ragsdale thinks that, in terms of energy consumption, we’re overweight and we need to have our food rationed so we get down to an acceptable weight.
The St. Cloud Times’ Larry Schumacher asked why Rep. Bachmann thinks we could return to $2/gallon gas prices. Rep. Bachmann replied by giving a historical perspective on gas prices. She first noted that national average gas price was $2.46 when she was elected. She then said that the signal that Congress sent to the world was that we weren’t going to do anything to increase energy supplies.
She said that that signal, coupled with the threats from Hugo Chavez and other tyrants (my word, not Rep. Bachmann’s), drove prices higher. She said that if we brought more oil and natural gas online, and invested in nuclear power, clean coal technologies and other alternatives currently being researched at NREL, we’d have more energy in a short period of time than we had when gas was $2-something a gallon.
KARE11’s John Croman asked whether reducing the speed limit might help reduce our consumption of gas. Rep. Bachmann said that everything should be on the table in this discussion.
Several things caught my attention during the call.
One was Rep. Bachmann saying that she didn’t “care where the energy was coming from”, whether it was from hybrid cars, oil, nuclear, coal-to-gas technologies or wherever as long as these things dropped energy prices to consumers.
Another was Rep. Bachmann talking about how environmentally alert people are in Alaska. She said that people working on the North Slope literally put a somerthing on the ground under a truck anytime it stopped so that oil leaking from a crankcase couldn’t touch the ground. Her point was that oil companies are extremely compliant with the environmental laws on the books, which she characterized as justifiably strict.
Rep. Bachmann also talked about setting up a special court to deal strictly with litigation that stops the exploration process. She cited a lawsuit that put a 2 year halt in an energy project because it took that long to litigate. Rep. Bachmann said that such specialty courts already exist, citing a special court that dealt strictly with tax issues. She said that that court was expert in tax law. The energy court theoretically would have experts on energy law staffing it. That way, hearings would be expedited instead of being lumped in with other lawsuits and appeals.
Finally, I got a chuckle when Rep. Bachmann talked about the EIA’s prediction capabilities. After getting asked about a “Department of Energy study” that showed there would be a minimal drop, perhaps as little as a couple cents per gallon, Rep. Bachmann said that that was a report from the EIA. She then said that the EIA once predicted that crude oil might reach as high as $22/bbl. Rep. Bachmann then said that their predictions aren’t something that she’d rely on.
Rep. Bachmann also chided Democrats for not taking action on the alternative energy tax credits that expire in the near future. If those are allowed to expire without a vote, Democrats bear sole responsibility on that.
Technorati Tags: Gas Crisis, Michele Bachmann, NREL, North Slope, Environment, Tax Credits, Free Market Solutions, ANWR, EIA Report, Jim Ragsdale, Larry Schumacher, John Croman, Tim Pugmire
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog