By Congressman Joe Pitts

The House voted yet again this week on a piece of legislation focused on energy use in our nation.  At a time when politicians in Congress and on the campaign trail are decrying the rising cost of living and gasoline that is well above 3 dollars at the pump, one might think that the legislation would have focused on reducing prices, which would mean increasing production.

Instead, the bill would impose a 17.7 billion dollar tax increase on energy producers, namely oil companies.  Economics explains that higher taxes equal increased cost to producers, which has the effect of decreasing production and leads to higher, not lower prices.  Worse yet, because Congress only has the ability to tax American oil companies, foreign companies were not included in the new tax, meaning the legislation would actually increase our dependence on foreign oil and give a competitive advantage to dictators like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.
 
If we were faced with a choice between energy from cheap fossil fuels and cheap renewable energies, then the decision would be made far easier.  That however, is simply not the case.
     
The difficulty surrounding the energy debate is that there are many forces at play in determining how Americans get the fuel we use to create energy and what determines the prices we eventually pay.  This allows for politicians and interest groups to lob all kinds of rhetoric into a debate that is difficult enough to understand without it.  For instance, Speaker Pelosi, in an email to supporters, had this to say about the energy bill: “Congress took action to put us on a path toward energy independence—to lower energy costs, grow our economy and create new jobs, strengthen national security, and reduce global warming.” 

If there had been a piece of legislation on the House floor that did all that, I would have voted yes.  Instead, we voted on a bill that would further increase the cost of gas in the near term, and our dependence on foreign oil at that, without providing any immediate solution to our energy problem.

I believe it is extremely important that we continue to invest in tax credits to develop renewable technologies like wind, solar, and biomass.  I believe we will be better off as a nation if we can produce clean renewable energy here at home.  And I believe someday that will be the case.  However, we need to take a measured approach to this issue, or we will see prices at the pump of 5 dollars and higher, without any silver bullet technology that replaces our dependence on fossil fuels.
 
Energy experts acknowledge that our scale of energy use is massive and renewable technologies currently make up a small portion of production.  Unfortunately, we cannot stop using fossil fuels until we have viable alternatives.  While we need to press as hard as we can to get there, it will take time for renewable technologies to become competitive.

The rhetoric from the Speaker’s Office does not match the reality of our situation.  We need realistic debate and real solutions.  The Republicans on the Energy and Commerce Committee have formed an Energy Security and Climate Change Task Force in order to address the serious issue of where we will get out energy.  The task force will give me the opportunity to hear new voices in the energy policy field and engage experts in a thoughtful discussion about the best market-oriented and competition-based course of action to address energy security and global warming.
 
Fortunately for cash-strapped families, the energy bill we voted on this week is likely going to die in the Senate.  I hope that going forward we can work on sensible solutions that help American families, not foreign owned oil companies.

Congressman Joe Pitts represents the 16^th Congressional District of Pennsylvania.

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