Last week’s energy speech was vintage Obama: repeating the same bad ideas that he has advocated since his pre‐2008 election campaign and misrepresenting both his actions and the opposition.
To be sure, he is correct that the Republicans are overstating what can be done immediately to alleviate oil price spikes. However, he falls into the same trap as the Republicans in believing that a sensible policy exists to avoid the inevitable fluctuations in world oil prices. These fluctuations are more tolerable than the possible alternatives.
His selective statement of his policies ignores at a minimum its general anti‐fossil fuel thrust with slowdowns in oil and gas leasing on federal land, the temporizing on the Keystone XL pipeline, and the massive anti‐coal regulations promulgated by the Environmental Protection Agency. He continues on the paths of dictating fuel‐efficiency standards and pursuing dubious alternative energy incentives. Moreover, Republican criticisms of these actions belie the assertion of exclusive concern with drilling. There may be no silver bullet, but there are more sensible policies than Obama’s.
Otherwise the speech differs in no substantial respect from his prior efforts. Every key point from the America‐can‐do‐it pep talk to his misleading argument about tax benefits to the oil industry was critiqued in my Cato Policy Analysis: “The Gulf Oil Spill: Lessons for Public Policy.”
