A Complete Waste of Energy
This 1,700-page bill fails to address the fuel and power needs of the average American.
By Jerry Taylor and Dan Becker, Jerry Taylor is director of natural resource studies at the Cato Institute. Dan Becker is director for the Sierra Club's global warming and energy program.
A House-Senate energy conference committee is about to disgorge a 1,700-page legislative abomination that should cause both the left and right to choke. Although the bill has yet to be released, enough is known to conclude that it will be three parts corporate welfare and one part cynical politics. The bill is a shocking abdication of the administration and Congress' responsibility.
The centerpiece of the bill is a $16-billion package of tax breaks and production subsidies designed to further rig the market to favor well-connected energy producers (almost all of which enjoy plenty of federal handouts) at the expense of others.
The biggest winners will include nuclear power, small domestic oil producers (which dispense some of the highest-cost oil in the world market today), "clean coal" technology (which has yet to produce a commercially operable plant despite billions in public subsidies) and various exotic energy technologies that can't attract much private capital from skeptical investors.
In an unrigged market, a technology with economic merit needs no subsidy. Likewise, if a technology were without economic merit, no public subsidy — no matter how large — would turn an ugly market duckling into a beautiful economic swan.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-taylor29oct29,1,5150089.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
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