Steve Buyer Offers Proposal to Help with Energy Crisis; Dem Opponent Nels Ackerson Demands Delay Until After Election

Congressman Steve Buyer has put forward a pithily-named piece of legislation that would approve a series of steps to help with the energy and gas situation that is cutting into the wallets of so many Americans.

From Buyer’s press release:

The Main Street USA Energy Independence Security Act, H.R. 6001, builds upon the Energy Policy Act of 2005. H.R. 6001 is a significant work product that has been a year in the making, providing America with a broad based energy policy that our country desperately needs. H.R. 6001 provides guidance to set America on a course to become less reliant on foreign energy and provide incentives for exploration and energy access here on home soil.

“H.R. 6001 seeks to encourage greater domestic production of energy, bringing more energy electricity to the grid, renewing development of the nation’s nuclear program, expanding cellulosic ethanol technologies, and increasing the use of clean coal. This bill also provides for conservation incentives and supports renewable energy sources,” noted Buyer.

Wow. Year in the making.

Sounds good, right?

I’m sure it’s not perfect, but it’s more than the Democrat-controlled Congress has been doing (which is nothing).

Ah, but Nels Ackerson, Buyer’s campaign-finance-law-challenged Democratic opponent (a big Washington lawyer that has moved back to Indiana to run against him), doesn’t like it.

He’d rather that relief to the wallets of American families wait until after the election (hat tip, Masson’s Blog):

“The incumbent congressman’s energy bill is too little, too late, too narrow in scope, and too politically motivated to have any effect on gas prices,” Ackerson contended. “Let’s be honest, this is a weak bill put forward at the last minute in an election year.

I hate to break it to Mr. Ackerson, since he is a candidate for Congress and should be aware of it, but every other year is an election year for the House of Representatives.

So the chances that any piece of legislation being proposed by a member of Congress gets put forward “in an election year” is rather high.

Buyer, of course, can be forgiven for assuming that the Democrats were going to do something about the price of gasoline in their first year in office.

The Democrats, you might have noticed, have done absolutely nothing about the price of gasoline or about the country’s energy situation, except pass a meaningless and empty bill to prevent the President from topping off the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (a big store of oil that is kept on hand as a practical matter for emergencies, such as hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico oil fields or conflict or terrorism in the Middle East).

Ackerson seems content to force Hoosier families (and American families more broadly) to continue to wait for Washington to do something about their plight with regard to gas prices until after the election.

Why they would think that electing Ackerson would solve the problem, when Ackerson’s party has done nothing about the price of gas since gaining the majority, is beyond me.

Its current co-sponsors are all members of his political party, and it has no chance of being passed.

Heaven forbid that Ackerson’s party want to do anything about the price of gasoline.

They certainly haven’t done anything to help with it so far since obtaining the majority.

“Hoosiers are being hit hard with gas prices passing the $4 mark. Providing relief and reducing our dependence on foreign oil are too important for political gimmicks. They deserve serious, comprehensive energy proposals.”

Strange. Political gimmicks are all that Democrats like Baron Hill and Nels Ackerson have put forward.

Serious, comprehensive energy proposals are what Steve Buyer just put on the table.

Unsurprisingly, the Democrats don’t like it.

Ackerson, though not opposed to drilling where oil can be recovered in an environmentally sound manner, does not believe a focus on increasing oil production is the answer.

“We need complete solutions, including wind, bio-fuels, solar, safe nuclear and clean coal technologies, as well as conservation,” he explained.

I look forward to seeing cars powered by windmills, solar cells, nuclear reactors, and clean coal.

I guess that the idea of drilling for more oil is just too simplistic.

Why should we want to have more oil? It would only increase the global supply, lower prices, reduce our imports of oil from certain oil-rich countries that don’t like us, and have a considerable positive impact on our balance of trade (which would help the sagging value of the dollar, and thus further help reduce oil prices).

Simple things like this, though, seem to be beyond Washington insiders like Nels Ackerson.

This post is also available at Hoosierpundit.