The Economy
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Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Thank you.
I am actually very honored to be here with two friends who are talking about the significant problems we have in this country--simply, the lack of jobs. As we all know, government does not create jobs, but government can create a policy to discourage jobs, and that is specifically where we are today.
If I could, I'll just go in a slightly different direction from where the two of you have headed so far.
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Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I have my good friend here--the newest Member from the good State of Georgia, so we've got a good southerner here. We have somebody from the Midwest, and I am actually from the West. With all due respect, I think my part of the Nation is taking a bigger hit in this economy, because of government decisions, than are the others. The unemployment rate in the West is actually higher than any other section in this country.
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Mr. BISHOP of Utah. It has been that way for the last 12 months. So, somewhere, somebody has to figure out what is unique about my State and about our area in the West that has given us this wonderful distinction of having the best joblessness in the Nation for well over a year.
I think, obviously, there are a number of causes, but it is also, I think we can say for a certainty, that many of the new policies and regulations that have been adopted during this administration, coming out of Washington, are flat out not helping when we could be unleashing economic upturn as well as providing domestic energy independence for this country, which is a boon to economic development. Yet we're doing the exact opposite.
Let me show you three charts, if I could, simply to illustrate.
You know, every time I come here, I rant about the amount of public lands that we have. The Federal Government owns 650 million acres. That means that 1 out of every 3 acres in this country is now owned by the Federal Government. Unfortunately, in my area--the West--1 out of every 2 acres is owned by the Federal Government.
For example--and this is a different chart than I have used before--if the amount of land owned in the West by the Federal Government were owned in the East, that is how much area, the area in blue, would be owned and operated and controlled by the Federal Government. If, on the other hand, we in the West had as much land owned by the Federal Government as you out in the East--and by that, I mean everything east of the Rocky Mountains, that is how much of our territory would be controlled.
So, obviously, there is a unique element there, which simply means, of the 12 States that have had the slowest growth in their economies, the biggest joblessness increase--and I hate to say that--then 6 of those 12 are in the West. Georgia gets in there. I'm sorry. I didn't leave you out. Six of those 12 have to be found in the West.
If you want to go one step further and look at the 20 largest counties with 25,000 or more inhabitants, counties which have the highest unemployment and joblessness rates, of those 20, 19 of the 20 are found in the West. You have to go down to number 20 before you finally have somebody--in this case, it's Michigan--that breaks through with a higher unemployment rate than Western counties have.
So I am going to make the contention that there is a reason the West has been hit very hard in what I simply like to refer to as an ``inexplicable war on the West.'' I think the numbers bear it out, and part of it is because of policies. Without taking too much of your time, let me just list off a couple, a slew, of some of those administrative decisions.
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Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Well, we'll all join in the battalion because we are all faced with the results of these decisions.
Let me just check off a couple of things that have happened in the West that have destroyed jobs in the West.
Obviously, in my State, the first thing this administration did is cancel 77 oil and gas leases in the State of Utah, but what we don't know is they have also halted scheduled oil and gas lease sales in Montana, South Dakota, and North Dakota. Wyoming, because of the climate of this administration, only is able to lease about 5 percent of the leases that are put on bid because of what we are doing here.
This administration banned uranium mining permits in the State of Arizona. They put multiple restrictions on oil shale development causes.
In California, they blocked water that goes to ranchers in the central valleys there. So, in some communities in California, up to 40 percent of those agricultural communities are now faced with unemployment. This administration tried to provide $400 million in stimulus to that area. Well, it's sad. They didn't need to do that. All they needed to do was to turn the water on, and it's free. Unfortunately, much of that stimulus money went to districts that voted to keep the water turned off, which created the unemployment in the first place.
I spoke to the economic development director from the State of Utah, who is in charge of tourism and movies. The West is a great set for lots of movies, but one of the problems the movie industry is facing in the West is, when you go on government lands, the permitting process to just go on there and do this clean energy of companies is taking so long that we basically don't have the situation taking place.
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Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Let me throw a couple more statistics at you, and then I want to do some dialoguing here because the numbers are good, but we have to put them in context eventually.
This administration is always big about saying, well, we need to have alternative energy sources to help our economy grow. I think we need to have all kinds of energy sources. But the Chamber of Commerce has identified 380 renewable energy projects that have been blocked or stalled over the past 4 years. The total cost of those stalled projects is $560 billion in lost economic activity and approximately a quarter of a million jobs that were not allowed simply because--it doesn't matter whether we're talking about fossil fuels or wind power or solar power or nuclear power--we're not doing anything to develop new energy sources.
Western Energy Alliance did a survey to find out what would be taking place in the West, these areas that I'm saying have been heavily hit. Seventy-four percent of the respondents to the survey by the Western Energy Alliance said their companies are downsizing capital investment in the Rocky Mountain area. That's $1.1 billion of investment that has been shifted from the Rocky Mountains to other parts, simply because of the inability of the government to try and help us to develop energy sources. That is $2.8 billion in infrastructure that would have come into the West and has not.
And it has a ripple effect. If you stop an oil lease or a gas lease or a wind power project or a solar power project in the West, you also stop projects that are on private lands abutting that area, and you stop the need of having truckers bring the equipment in and bring people in. And then you lose the mechanics jobs, and you lose the jobs from the hotel industry where they are surfaced.
Ninety percent of the respondents say that their company will continue to divert investment in the Rockies until there is a change in the regulatory process.
We don't have to have this joblessness. This government is creating it by policies that are not intended to build jobs but actually prevent jobs from being created.
I yield back.
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Mr. BISHOP of Utah. And I appreciate that. I think if you keep--I don't know if they can keep the cameras on that particular chart, but it is a telling chart. And it's one of the things that I think you are trying to say, that we have yet to learn lessons from history.
It is very clear that we are trying with the stimulus bill, a few of the other bills, right now, creating jobs by having tax-funded jobs being created. Unfortunately, that's a sector that's growing, but that's not a sector that will continue and build and has a multiplier effect in the economy. To do that, you have to have the private sector involved.
I hate to say this, but when we went into the Great Depression, there was the history. We'd already learned after the end of World War I how lowering tax rates actually increased the amount of revenue and spurred the economy. Same thing you mentioned also that took place in the 1960s that President Kennedy clearly understood, and it's happened several other times in the history of this country.
But at the beginning of the Depression, there were many people within the business community who had money to invest in business that could have spurred the economy, created jobs, and grown our economy out of the Depression. But they did not invest that money, primarily because they were afraid of what the tax and regulatory policies of the government would do, and, therefore, they simply sat on it. That's what happened as part of the problems we had in the Depression. People with investment opportunities did not do so.
Unfortunately, I think we find ourselves in that same situation.
The future tax policies, and you just mentioned we don't know what will happen at the end of this year, but it could be catastrophic in raising taxes. But in addition to the regulatory policies that we have placed in effect, the effort of the continuous deficit spending that we have done, all of those have added to a portion of unrest within the business community and it simply says, ``I'm going to wait to see where I'm going to invest to see what actually happens eventually.'' That is why the government doesn't actually create jobs, but the government policies can destroy the ability for those jobs to be created at the same time.
So I appreciate what my good colleagues have been saying, because it is true. Our regulatory policies and our tax policies have created so much nervousness within the system, we are not doing that which could encourage a multiplier effect within our economy, and that is exactly what we need at this particular time.
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Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Before you actually put that chart down, I think you understated that sentiment. It's not just people who understand business are not comfortable with that. I don't understand business and I look at that chart and I'm not comfortable with that. Any normal American would look at that and say something is desperately wrong with what we are doing.
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Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Actually some of them we did, but the one especially about renewable energy products, the 380 renewable energy products that have not been allowed to go forward, which would be another quarter of a million jobs and $500 billion in economic input, that was done by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. That actually happens to be nationwide; not just in the West.
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Mr. BISHOP of Utah. So what the gentleman is telling me is that if Congress does nothing, there will automatically be a marriage penalty increase. Child deductions will go down. There will be another death tax increase. There will be a capital gains tax increase; a dividend tax increase. Unless we do something proactive, it will automatically happen.
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Mr. BISHOP of Utah. While you're there, if the gentleman wouldn't mind for just a minute, let me talk about another concept of taxes which I don't think many people are aware. These are things that will automatically happen. But there are bills that will be coming to the floor sometime soon that deal with tax increases on our form of energy production.
Now one of those things listed in there in the cost of doing business is also the cost of energy that takes place. There is a bill that passed the Natural Resources Committee, it's called the CLEAR Act, which purportedly dealt with what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico which is a terrible crisis and needs to be changed in some way.
But deep within the bowels of this bill is a $2 per gallon tax increase on all oil produced in the Gulf of Mexico, and a 40 cents I think it's per trillion cubic feet of natural gas that will be produced in the Gulf of Mexico. And one would assume, if we are dealing with the Gulf of Mexico, that money could be for restoration work, for cleanup work, for those who have lost jobs and lost income during that period of time. Unfortunately, that's not what that money will be used for if this bill passes.
That money is all going to go to the Federal department into a specific fund which would now bypass appropriations and be just under a billion dollars a year to buy more land in the Federal inventory. So the amount of blue on this chart could grow in every section of this country, but once again primarily I get the fun of it in my State, where most of the public land is.
That is a tax increase on business solely so the government can grow its hold on the amount of property we own here, and in so doing will infringe upon the ability of producing better energy in the future. And like I say, if we were actually moving forward in alternative energy, as we say we want to, maybe that wouldn't be so bad. But this administration is also shutting down alternative energy projects at the same time it is shutting down traditional energy projects. And that's another tax that goes onto that multitude of taxes you are talking about, and actually goes on to compound the amount of spending that we're doing.
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Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I appreciate the gentleman expressing I think the frustration that many of us in Congress are feeling in the direction in which this country is going, and that we can look at concept after concept of either outrageous spending, poor policy that deals with tax policy, poor regulatory policy, poor energy development policy, put those all together, and it still spells a lack of jobs. And what was supposed to be a time period where we were going to be creating all sorts of jobs is simply one where we have lost jobs.
Unfortunately, what we are also finding unique about this recession is people who have lost their job are staying unemployed longer or taking part-time jobs instead. The length of the joblessness is unusually long in this type of recession. And I think part of that goes back to the policies that this country is pushing forward that do not encourage investment in our economy and do not multiply our economy impact, when we have historical evidence of how that could easily happen. We are ignoring that.
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