Free Markets, Not Government, Are the Answer

Americans in every part of our nation are acutely aware that something is causing steep increases in the price of gasoline. At approximately $4 per gallon and continuing its upward climb, some estimate that the price of gasoline could double in the foreseeable future. Such prices not only will create havoc with family budgets, they will stagger our nation’s economy.

We have been given many reasons for the price increases and many solutions to resolve the crisis that these increases have created. But when Congressional Democrats recently called for the federal government to nationalize the refineries, I was reminded of President Reagan’s first inaugural address in which he said:

"In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."

That is as true of our “present crisis” as it was of the enormous challenges faced by our fortieth President.

For four decades, presidents and Congress have yielded to environmental extremists who have opposed virtually every opportunity to move “we the people” closer to energy self-sufficiency. They have opposed hydropower because of perceived threats to the natural habitat of fish even though hydropower has been used to produce electricity since before the invention of the light bulb, it is nearly free, there are no waste products, and it does not pollute the water or the air. They have opposed nuclear energy even though it provides safe, clean, and inexpensive power to much of the world. They have opposed drilling for oil on western federally-owned lands, in the arctic wasteland, and offshore and in the Outer Continental Shelf of the United States, even while China and Cuba are preparing to drill for oil in those same waters off America’s coast. They have even opposed erecting wind turbines off our coasts that convert kinetic energy in the wind into electricity, because turbines might block the view for boaters and for those with waterfront property. Political leadership should be made of sterner stuff.

Beginning in 1982, Congress began limiting offshore drilling through the appropriations process for the Department of the Interior. In 1990, the elder President Bush issued an executive order restricting new offshore exploration and drilling. In 1998, President Clinton extended these regulations through 2012, and until this past week, our current President has done nothing to relax them. Now, at crisis stage, he indicates that he will support legislation opening the Outer Continental Shelf for exploration and drilling.

Since the 1970’s, American presidents have encouraged the American people to conserve, put on sweaters, and turn down thermostats, with the understanding that the law of supply and demand would keep affordable the inexpensive oil we were importing from the Middle East. Unfortunately, in the intervening years the same governmental leaders that have overseen our energy crisis have presided over the export of America’s manufacturing industries to other countries. As a result, we are no longer the world’s foremost consumer of foreign oil. In fact, there are far more tankers crowding China’s ports than there are in our own, fueling China’s rapidly increasing manufacturing industries. While we might hope that driving less and conserving more will bring down oil prices, hordes of foreign consumers are hungry for our share and more, thus driving up prices.

As a result of America’s energy crisis, both political parties and their candidates will likely be trying to sell us complex energy plans on how government can get us out of this mess that government got us into. As President Reagan wisely understood, comprehensive government plans are not the solution to the crisis we confront; government plans likely are the problem.

The solution to our energy crisis is not nationalization of oil refineries. That is the way of Venezuela, Russia, Cuba, and China. The answer in the United States is for our government to step aside and rescind its Executive Orders, statutes, and volumes of rules and regulations that have all but ruined America’s robust economic engine of exploration, research, development, and production.

America has the same capability it has always had to lead the world in developing new sources of bioenergy from plant matter and animal waste. It can harness geothermal energy from deep within the earth, and the sun’s energy can be more efficiently used for heat and electricity. Hydrogen can be cleanly produced from renewable sources. Tidal forces, when harnessed, offer enormous potential power. And while all of these new technologies are being developed or expanded, we have sufficient deposits of oil and coal in the United States to provide for all of our energy needs for many future decades.

Congress is very good at producing a lot of hot air, but it will not produce a single barrel of oil or one iota of the new energy technologies we need. The seemingly insurmountable problems confronting America’s families and our economy will be more likely to be addressed when voters recognize that their own government, not Middle Eastern sheiks, is causing our energy crisis. Private industry, freed of government shackles, is more than capable of providing America with the safe, clean, reliable, and low cost power our nation needs.