The American People Deserve Better than a Wasteful Bill Crafted in Secret (Rep. Mike Conaway)

Energy is an issue that affects every single person in our country and there is no doubt that our energy crisis is real. Yet once again Democrat leadership has crafted a harmful piece of legislation behind closed doors. After a second attempt to breathe new life into the energy bill, the revised legislation still implements higher costs on consumers and businesses, and requires large mandates in unproven science. This ‘comprehensive’ solution does nothing to increase our real energy production. Production of oil and natural gas, nuclear, coal-to-liquid, and other forms of energy are completely left out of what Democrats call a ‘comprehensive’ solution.

One possible facet of the energy bill is to inflict a nationwide Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) requiring states to produce a certain amount of electricity from renewable sources. RPS places an unfair burden on states that lack the natural resources to meet a new renewable electricity standard. Consumers who live in these states will be forced to pay considerably higher electricity rates with no additional renewable electricity in return. Efforts such as this will not solve our energy problems and are not good policy. The imposed ethanol mandate would also result in high consumer costs and is not yet been proven to be an efficient and effective source of renewable fuel.

Before we can implement changes to our lifestyles, we must know what kind of effect these new changes will have on consumers and small businesses. If it were cheaper to produce electricity today by using alternative sources of energy, such as solar and wind, we would be using them — that is the commerce of our economy. Until cost-benefit facts can be determined based on sound science and valid research, we must not act in haste and carelessly implement legislation that is harmful to our economy and will not help the energy problems at hand. I beseech the Majority to stop wasting time with veto-bait legislation drafted in secret, and start working in a bipartisan manner to find real solutions to our energy crisis. The American people deserve better.