Stop Wrong-Headed Energy Policies

Floor Speech

Mr. BOUSTANY. Mr. Speaker, this country has never had an energy strategy. And the only thing worse than not having an energy strategy is having an energy policy that is actually hurting our country, hurting American energy production and American workers, and making us more dependent on foreign oil. That is what the Obama administration is doing right now.

Let's review the record. A moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, hurting American energy production. A budget proposal that offers $50 billion in new taxes on independent, small energy companies working throughout the United States. Also, tax policy that is going to hurt large U.S. companies trying to compete for limited reserves around the world to meet U.S. energy needs. And finally, an attack on horizontal drilling because we have now found large reserves of oil and gas in our shale formations, and this administration is looking to shut all of that down.

And then they come forward because the price of oil, the price of oil at $105 a barrel today, they now want to open up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is supposed to be used in severe shortages. That is not an energy policy; that actually hurts our country.

It is time to stop these wrong-headed policies that are hurting American energy production and hurting American workers.

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