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Boehner Plan: Energy Leases Will Pay For Jobs

January 12, 2012 RSS Feed Print

House advisors to Speaker John Boehner are already preparing for an early battle over jobs and energy once Congress returns.

Officials describe Boehner's American Energy & Infrastructure Jobs Act as the GOP's premier jobs bill in 2012, aimed at boosting long-term hiring of road and bridge builders.

It is to be paid for by new oil and gas leases, providing a one-two punch on key election year issues. According to the speaker's office, the bill would "permanently remove government barriers to American energy production and use the additional revenues to repair and improve America's roads and bridges—both of which support long-term job growth." [Jobs Report is a Belated Christmas Present to Obama.]

A Boehner aide said "we believe this bill offers a bipartisan opportunity to fund our long-term infrastructure needs in a fiscally responsible way while reducing America's dependence on foreign oil."

The package would supplement the GOP's mandate that President Obama OK the new Keystone XL energy pipeline between Canada and Texas that some say will create nearly 250,000 jobs. In fact, U.S. Chamber Vice President Bruce Josten Chamber of Commerce slammed the president Thursday, telling Whispers that Obama should have mentioned Keystone in his Wednesday event on insourcing jobs, since virtually all the jobs it would create would be in the United States. [See the latest political cartoons.]

Tags:
House of Representatives,
Congress,
John Boehner

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America’s economic system is dependent upon an ever advancing infrastructure that supports its commerce. Government of the people, by the people and for the people has been the driving force behind the development of early post roads, canals and navigable waterways, public schools, the land grant development of the railroads and technical colleges and universities, a national airline system, rural electrification, interstate highways, and now satellite communication and the internet.

These times and challenges are calling us to move forward at the speed of light by taking the nation totally electric and electronic from the same limitless energy that over the eons turned an accumulating biomass into oil that must be found, fought over, mined, protected and transported, refined, distributed, consumed, and leaves costly waste to be disposed of or ignored.

Now is the time to build a smart energy grid that accommodates the dispersed generation of so much electricity from the wind, sun and gravity that it can be licensed for free individual use, usher in a new era of free enterprise and end the nation’s entangled with and servitude and entanglement to the international oil interests. This source of power transports itself, belongs to all of us, is limitless and free and leaves no costly waste.

Industry, homes and public facilities are already wired a with a peak-plus supply of energy from wind turbines, geo-thermal wells, solar collectors, and surf and sea displacement generators we can meet all of our business and individual needs, electric power low-cost fair and laden high-speed and light rail, and use the plus supply online for the electrolytic production of hydrogen for fuel-cell generation when the skies are dark and the wind and sea still.

Sam Osborne of IA 4:21PM January 21, 2012

Why don't you make them pay for the leases they are getting for free right now...that way you don't have to spill oil in other pristine areas.

Keith of MI 2:17PM January 17, 2012

Seriously? At what point did Canada join the US? Reliance on "dirty to produce" Canadian shale extracted oil reduces our dependence on foreign oil how?

And why not pipe this oil to the Great Lakes region and the east coast where the oil is needed to fuel our industries and ACTUAL energy needs based on population?

Texas need oil like a pig needs mud!

Michael of NM 5:39PM January 13, 2012

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