Fifty seven days after an oil rig explosion triggered an uncontrolled deep water oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico, President Obama addressed the nation last night about his administration's efforts to address the crisis.
After offering two short paragraphs to explain what is actually being done to stop the oil leak, President Obama devoted most of his speech to explaining why the oil leak means now is the time to dramatically and permanently raise the cost of gas, diesel, and electricity for every American.
Jay Leno gave voice to the widespread puzzlement people have with Obama's misplaced focus last night: "President Obama said today he is going to use the Gulf disaster to immediately push a new energy bill through Congress. I got an idea ... How about first using the Gulf disaster to fix the Gulf disaster?"
Good question, but we think we know why President Obama is not focused on plugging the oil leak and is instead focused on plugging new energy taxes.
President Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, said at the start of the Obama presidency that "you never let a crisis go to waste," which we now know means that the Obama team never lets a crisis go without out more borrowing, more taxing, and more spending in support of their political allies. We saw this with the $862 billion stimulus law that didn't create jobs, the ObamaCare law that won't bend the health cost curve down, and now with ObamaEnergy that won't lower energy costs and won't increase energy supplies.
Using the present crisis as pretext, President Obama is now urging the Senate to pass cap and trade energy taxes. Even though this has nothing to do with plugging the hole, Obama and his liberal allies in Congress want the power to spend billions in new tax revenues through a massive redistribution of wealth from taxpayers to green energy company shareholders.
The Senate is reportedly going to take up a cap and trade energy tax bill shortly after it returns on July 12th. If it passes the Senate, the House will vote on and approve that new tax in a lame duck session after the November elections.
Our opportunity to stop this new energy tax is now, and the next two months will be absolutely critical. These new energy taxes will hurt you and your family with higher gas and electricity costs. They will kill hundreds of thousands of jobs, prevent small business growth, and ship jobs overseas to China and India.
We cannot afford to pass a massive energy tax in this economic recession, but President Obama is more concerned with redistributing wealth than he is in growing new wealth, even if that means destroying jobs in the process. Cutting up a shrinking pie is apparently not a problem if you're the one wielding the knife and giving away the pieces. It's the rest of us that have to worry about the consequences.
Meanwhile, the oil continues to gush under the Gulf waters. Like Jay Leno, Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, summed up well this President's misplaced priorities: "The climate bill isn't going to stop the oil leak...The first thing you have to do is stop the oil leak."
