Ending energy dependence

When the House of Representatives votes tomorrow on the bipartisan Domestic Ocean Energy Resources (DOER) Act, it will be considering one of the nation’s most meaningful energy-policy reforms in history.

Decades of “just say ‘no’” energy policy has turned America into a country too dependent on foreign, and often unstable, sources of energy. We send $300 billion a year overseas for energy we can produce at home, a figure that represents one-third of the current trade deficit. We have lost millions of manufacturing jobs over the past two decades because of high energy prices. We should be investing that $300 billion in America to create our own good jobs and provide our own energy security.

The DOER Act does just that. America is the only developed nation that forbids safe energy production on its Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), a fact that puts us at an economic and strategic disadvantage with other countries in a highly competitive global economy.

It just doesn’t make any sense.

The DOER Act represents a balanced, commonsense compromise to deliver desperately needed energy supplies to the American people, which in turn will lower prices for consumer wallets and create hundreds of thousands of family-wage jobs. It will spur production of an untapped energy resource and correct federal government policies that have led to our dangerous dependence on foreign energy. And, just as importantly, it champions states’ rights by protecting those not interested in producing energy off their shores.

Washington Times