WASHINGTON — Institute for Energy Research President Thomas Pyle issued the following statement on the Obama administration’s final budget proposal:
“No longer accountable to the voters, President Obama’s disdain for affordable energy is on full display with his latest and final budget. As expected, the administration’s dead-on-arrival budget proposal includes an enormous new gasoline tax that would make energy more expensive for all Americans—having the harshest impact on the poor and middle class. The president also proposes steering billions more taxpayer dollars into his fantasy that wind and solar can somehow replace coal, oil, and natural gas as the dominant energy sources that power America’s economy. Finally, the president’s budget would pump hundreds of millions of dollars into the U.N.’s climate slush fund.
“The White House says this budget is about ‘making sure our economy works for everybody, not just those at the top,’ but this proposal would disproportionately raise energy costs on our most vulnerable citizens, while siphoning away money from taxpayers to line the pockets of special interests and politically-favored industrialists.
“A growing economy that benefits all Americans is rooted in access to affordable, reliable energy. As our recent study shows, opening up federal lands and waters to energy development could raise wages for millions of workers and create millions of new job opportunities, not only in the energy industry, but throughout the economy. None of this requires a government program or mandate—a seemingly foreign concept to the Obama administration. It simply requires the government to get out of the way and allow people to go to work producing American energy.”
Click here to read IER’s study on the economic benefits of opening federal lands to energy development.
###
