Rep Cory Gardner (CO-4) Gets it on Energy

This morn­ing I was on a con­fer­ence call con­cern­ing the Domes­tic Energy & Job Act which molds together a large col­lec­tion of energy leg­is­la­tion including:

• Strate­gic Energy Pro­duc­tion Act of 2012, H.R. 4480 (Rep. Cory Gard­ner, CO-​4)
• Gaso­line Reg­u­la­tions Act of 2012, H.R. 4471 (Rep. Ed Whit­field, KY-​1)
• Plan­ning for Amer­i­can Energy Act of 2012, H.R.4381 (Rep. Scott Tip­ton, CO-​3)
• Pro­vid­ing Leas­ing Cer­tainty for Amer­i­can Energy Act of 2012, H.R 4382 (Rep. Mike Coff­man, CO-​6)
• Stream­lin­ing Per­mit­ting of Amer­i­can Energy Act of 2012, H.R. 4383 (Rep. Doug Lam­born, CO-​5)
• The Stream­lin­ing Per­mit­ting of Amer­i­can Energy Act (H.R. 4383)
• The National Petro­leum Reserve Alaska Access Act, H.R. 2150 (Rep. “Doc” Hast­ings, WA-​4)
• The BLM Live Inter­net Auc­tions Act, H.R. 2752 (Rep. Bill John­son, OH-​6)

The call was Hosted by Major­ity Whip Kevin McCarthy (ca-​22), he was joined by Doc Hast­ings (WA-​4) Chair­man of the House Nat­ural Resources Com­mit­tee & Fresh­man Rep. Cory Gard­ner (CO-​4).

They made a pas­sion­ate case for their bill and dur­ing the Q & A stress­ing that gas although lower than a few months ago is still dou­ble the price it was when the admin­is­tra­tion came to office. Chair­man Hast­ings noted that Pres­i­dent Obama actions on energy: “His actions are 180 from his rhetoric” and that pro­duc­ers con­stantly inform him: ”Just tell me what the rules are and don’t change them, give me some cer­tainty” and noted states like North Dakota & Texas expe­ri­enced growth say­ing “…by hav­ing a pol­icy that pro­tects envi­ron­ment but allows extrac­tion it has fun­da­men­tally changed the sit­u­a­tion.”

Major­ity Whip McCarthy sug­gested folks from the EPA put “per­sonal beliefs and philo­soph­i­cal beliefs” before their actual tasks and dur­ing hear­ings when it comes to the actual effects of reg­u­la­tions on Jobs: “One thing we’ve found in the hear­ings is they don’t eval­u­ate this …and what it actu­ally means.”

All valid points but it was Fresh­man Cory Gard­ner of Col­orado that made the most sig­nif­i­cant point when it comes to free­ing energy pro­duc­ers when answer­ing a ques­tion from Politico con­cern­ing North Dakota as an exam­ple. Rather than stick­ing to North Dakota he noted an exam­ple from his own state of Colorado.

In Weld County, CO. there are 31 oper­a­tors pro­duc­ing energy. Of those 31 com­pa­nies 2 of them paid a com­bined $209 mil­lion dol­lars in prop­erty taxes.

To put this in per­spec­tive the total bud­get of the county is $200 mil­lion.

Run those num­ber through your head a sec­ond. This is rev­enue not pro­duced by rais­ing taxes higher but sim­ply by let­ting com­pa­nies oper­ate and pay the taxes already on the books.

Pic­ture every state where the Gov­ern­ment has blocked this kind of action. Think of what this kind of thing would do for the bud­get bot­tom line. And that doesn’t even count the employ­ment taxes, social secu­rity taxes, income taxes, excise taxes and even fuel taxes that these busi­nesses and every sin­gle employee they hire will be pay­ing to local, state and fed­eral gov­ern­ments sim­ply for the priv­i­lege of work­ing hard and mak­ing a money.

As Rep Cory Gard­ner said: “If we are going to unleash Amer­i­can Energy this is the best way to flip the switch”

Maybe I’m old fash­ioned being the son of par­ents born in the 20’s but this makes sense to me.

Update: A related video