Show VOICE OF BUSINESS The energy Let's produce a solution By Richard L. President Chamber of Commerce of the United States The unexpected collapse of until recently the world's second largest oil exporting has flashed a very clear warning to the United Our prosperity is precariously linked to the survival and continued friendship of Saudi Arabia an outpost of stability in an area undergoing change in some violent We have allowed America to become dangerously dependent on unreliable foreign energy We now import nearly one-half of all the oil we We must take Immediate steps to reduce this vulnerability by promoting greater domestic exploration and or risk losing the abundance and freedoms that so many Americans now take for No country which must rely on the goodwill of others for so basic a commodity as energy can expect to remain master of its own the Administration seems both unprepared and unwilling to face this tremendous In his televised State of the Union the President devoted just 13 words to energy and failed to suggest even one proposal to expand His passive attitude reflects the Administration's belief in the inevitability of an energy shortage in the need for government to impose new taxes or to call for other sacrifices in order to allocate the diminishing supplies among competing But who will make these Clearly it will not be the government regulators who will continue to draw handsome and each year make more of the decisions about what we where we live and how we the real losers will be the poor and those of modest means who will be trapped near the bottom of the deprived of a real opportunity for personal Defeatism is not what America is all I believe we can and must do The United States Geological Survey Indicates that domestic oil and gas reserves remaining to be discovered amount to approximately three times the presently proven oil and gas The only way we will ever locate and get those reserves out of the ground is by returning to market pricing without government A recent Harris poll indicates 65 of the public favors such More and more Americans now realize that our growing dependence on foreign countries from our own government's policy of holding down prices a policy however good the has had precisely the opposite effect by reducing competition and raising hindering production and forcing consumers to purchase more expensive substitutes from I recommend beginning on June the President eliminate the current system of maintaining a national average price for domestic crude a price known as the composite In its place would be a gradual phase-out of price controls of lower tier domestic oil old by October Upper tier oil would be decontrolled In there would be no new legislation Imposing taxes or extending This is the best approach to reach what should be a shared to minimize our energy imports from and maximize the production of energy and the creation of jobs at home at the cheapest possible cost to In this policy would provide all 0 producers with the needed Incentives cover rising expenditures and more oil from present And it would provide confidence future market thereby encouraging companies to invest more of their own t and borrowed capital to search for new Market pricing would also encourage more efficient use of helping to curb Arid as domestic production begins picking imports would The Chamber estimates this approach would at to our annual rate of inflation during the three-year phase-up And contrary to many there would be no as government at all levels would retain the lion's share of each extra revenue leaving only 28 cents available to companies for new But these incentives will not help if companies cannot The Administration is carrying to the extreme in its bid to lock out vast areas more than million acres of land from any exploration or The Administration's energy policy has forced working Americans to stimulate foreign economies while actually subsidizing their own dwindling rising inflation and possible eventual unemployment here at That's carrying sacrifice a bit too in it's tantamount to giving everyone in America a gun during but then asking them to stand in a then open A little more wisdom and common would go a long We must start to invest more of our own money in our own produce our own energy and create our own America has produced its way out of crises and we can certainly do it But we must stop and i |