Dear American Energy Supporter,
If you’re like me, you may find that it’s getting harder and harder to turn on the television or open a newspaper without getting frustrated at what is going on in Washington. For those of us here at the Institute for Energy Research (IER), this week has been no different. Last Friday, President Obama announced his latest solution to our unemployment problem: he’s handing corporate executives on Wall Street $2.3 billion to create 17,000 “green jobs.” That’s $135,295 of your hard-earned tax dollars per job!
The size and scope of the handout may have changed, but Friday’s announcement was just another in a long line of promises we’ve heard from President Obama about “green jobs” and our “clean energy future.” But no matter how many times he repeats himself, the facts remain the same. After decades of research and billions of taxpayer dollars invested in the wind and solar energy industries, they are still unable to operate in the marketplace without a 30 percent taxpayer funded government subsidy. Read this as your hard earned tax dollars being funneled to politically favored industries.
As the President likes to say, let me be clear. “Green jobs” do not last, are extraordinarily expensive, and will not put the 15.3 million unemployed Americans back to work.
If the President is really interested in job creation, he should look no further than the oil and natural gas resources right here in America. The Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), if opened for business, would create over 1 million high-wage jobs and spur economic growth nationwide. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is continuing to ignore these job-creating energy resources in favor of taxpayer dependent make-work jobs.
Let’s send President Obama a message: no more taxpayer greenbacks for so-called green jobs. And stop blocking efforts towards the creation of good paying jobs by opening up our offshore oil and gas energy resources.
