GOP: Yeah We'll Pay For Infrastructure Spending. With Money From Oil Pumped Out of ANWR.

Very good idea, especially politically. "Infrastructure spending," which apparently means dog parks and stipends for union bosses' mistresses, remains popular with the public, which doesn't seem to understand when they're being conned.

The Democrats keep pushing this forward as a political wedge against us.

This proposal sticks the wedge back between the Democrats' eyes. Because obviously it would also create jobs (and reduce the deficit) to pump oil in America.

So why not do both?

It forces them to choose between pandering to independents and pandering to the liberal base. And it smokes them out -- they want to keep saying all they care about is jobs, jobs, jobs. And yet, when a good proposal for jobs is on the table, they're forced to reveal that they have a hidden agenda that has nothing to do with jobs (or, actually, is anti-jobs).

On Friday, Rep. Steve Stivers (R-Ohio) put meat on the bones by announcing a plan that would require lease sales in areas off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, among other areas, and lift a congressional ban on oil-and-gas leasing that covers most of the eastern Gulf of Mexico. The plan includes a lease sale off Virginia’s coast by mid-2012.

“The U.S. has vast energy resources that are not being developed due to federal government roadblocks. Removing these barriers and allowing expanded American energy production will create long-term job growth, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and provide much-needed revenue to help pay for vital infrastructure improvements,” Stivers said in a statement Friday.

The plan is expected to move through the House in the “coming weeks,” his office said.

It would provide states with drilling off their shores a 37.5 percent cut of the revenues, expanding the revenue-sharing program for several other Gulf of Mexico states created in 2006 to other regions.

I like it.

posted by Ace at 12:42 PM

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