The Obama administration delayed, and then canceled, the Keystone XL Project expansion that would have generated up to 120,000 jobs and lowered the cost of fuel for Americans. Now, with oil at $108 a barrel, the opposition party has him scrambling to rationalize how that is a good thing.
Pres. Obama points to his solar energy subsidies as an effort to wean the country off of oil yet oil has little to do with energy generation. Americans are actually quite frugal regarding electricity usage - countries like Canada are higher per capita - and to actually make a dent in overall energy usage, we would need to put up all the solar farms created to-date every day for the next 50 years. Add in the fact that competing against China, a country with low wages and no environmental concerns, to mass produce solar panels and it's easy to see why subsidies for a dozen hand-picked companies have just been money wasted by the Department of Energy.
The president is blaming everyone but his advisors - China, Iran, you name it. He had tested approving Keystone and the reaction from part of his base was negative but that shouldn't have mattered. Union jobs for liberals have more value than caving into environmental progressives in an election year - it's not like progressives will vote for a Republican in November and without unions mobilizing votes union people may stay home - and he overruled his own scientists in insisting there must be some environmental impact even though the area of concern is criss-crossed with pipelines already and pipelines are extremely safe.
The fact is that onerous domestic policies are what keep us at the mercy of imports. Artificially picking winners and loses in green energy do not fix that. Getting rid of a tax credit for oil companies, and making America less competitive, is not helping anyone when actual taxes are being spent on companies that hire no one and end up being expensive bankruptcies.
Repeating there would be no "silver bullet'' for America's energy crunch, Obama highlighted steps already taken to expand domestic production and improve fuel efficiency. More natural gas is fine, of course, but people do not drive natural gas cars. So perhaps he does not understand why oil prices go up and down. More money for algae research is great, but "It's the economy, stupid' voting means he should be solving short term issues also, lest he run the risk of losing an election to any of the most uninspiring Republican candidates in recent memory.
