On the recordMay 17, 2011
I wish to talk for a moment about the ill-considered proposal we will be voting on at 6:15 tonight and about the administration's chaotic approach when it comes to our national energy policy. I say ``chaotic approach'' because to pay attention to what the President and this administration have said about fossil fuels and energy will give you whiplash if you try to keep up with it because there are so many, apparently, inconsistencies between what is said and what is actually done, and then when something like high gasoline prices becomes very much a concern around kitchen tables in America, then all of a sudden the President again, as he announced the last day or two, is all of a sudden open for more domestic product. It is a problem for a number of reasons. One is, who in their right mind would invest the kind of money that is necessary in order to develop our domestic energy reserves when the administration and the President himself seem to be of two minds about whether we should punish domestic production or whether we should encourage it. I would suggest to you that the message has primarily been one of how to discourage or how to punish domestic production of energy in favor of imported energy from abroad. For example, one of the mixed messages the President gave was in March of 2010 when he proposed expanding offshore drilling along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, near my home in Texas, and the north coast of Alaska.…
