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President Obama recently requested $2 billion from congress to fund the pursuit of technologies that could free the U.S. from the stranglehold of foreign oil. In his most recent energy proposal, dubbed “Energy Security Trust,” the president proposed that we fund this program from royalties from gas and oil drilling over the next ten years.
“This is not a Democratic idea or a Republican idea. This is a smart idea,” Obama said at the Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago on Friday.
According to a White House white paper, the idea is to design “advanced vehicles that run on electricity, homegrown biofuels, fuel cells, and domestically produced natural gas.”
Skeptics agree that congress is unlikely to embrace the idea, as there are other, similar ideas that do more than just benefit the research and development of energy for vehicular usage, as Obama’s bill proposes.
The “Advanced Energy Trust Fund,” proposed by Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, does a whole lot more.
In a recent article in the Washington Post, they lambasted Obama’s energy bill by pointing out that the bill proposed Murkowski does much more.
Murkowski is proposing to open up new public lands and waters for oil and gas exploration, including 2,000 acres in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Some of the royalties from this extra drilling would go to the fund. By contrast, Obama isn’t proposing opening up any new areas — he simply wants to speed up permitting on existing lands in order to pay for the fund.
“The president hit on a good idea when he called for a trust fund to promote energy innovation,” said Murkowski spokesman Robert Dillon. “But unlike Sen. Murkowski’s proposal, he would not enable new energy production to pay for it. The president says he wants to divert a share of the royalties from offshore production that has already been factored into the budget. The inevitable result is either deficit spending or the goring of someone’s proverbial ox, such as the Land and Water Conservation Fund.”
Which bill do you think is more beneficial for our country, as we move towards a greener future seeking sustainable sources of natural energy?
