Steny Hoyer's Myopia

Monday's Wall Street Journal featured another two people of some national prominence providing their answer to how $10 billion could most productively be spent over four years.


Steny Hoyer, the current Democratic House majority leader, was one of the respondents. Steny is the kind of guy for whom the term 'amiable dunce' was invented.


For example, he begins his diatribe with a totally unrelated swipe at President George Bush. Hoyer alleges that Bush has simply been able to,

"turn a projected $5.6 trillion budget surplus into a projected $5.6 trillion budget deficit in less than eight years."

Of course, dunce Steny doesn't seem to remember that we are...ah...fighting a shooting war in Afghanistan and Iraq!

Wake up, Steny! Or perhaps go back to Maryland. For good.

Steny then goes on to exhibit his total lack of understanding of our free enterprise system. Hoyer alleges,

"Right now, 311 million acres of public land are available for oil leasing. Of those the oil companies are sitting idle on 68 million acres, including 33 million on the Outer Continental Shelf. Republicans seem incapable of acknowledging that those 68 million acres are already leased, yet completely undrilled. The public wants drilling on that land, and Democrats agree."

Steny's ignorance would be funny, if it weren't so seriously damaging to American interests.

You see, Steny, 'the oil companies,' which you obviously despise, can't even explore for oil on land without leasing it. First they lease. Then they test and explore.

Then, if there is promising evidence of oil or gas, they drill.

Get it?

Sure, everyone wishes every acre of leased land could be drilled for profitable oil production. But that's not how it works. However, the fat and lazy Democratic Congress gets revenues from leased land, whether it was drillable, or not.

Steny, here's a basic lesson in economics. If a company leases land for oil exploration, and it believes oil is on/under that land, and global prices hit all-time highs, the company will drill to produce that oil faster than you can grab a free, lobbyist-paid-for lunch.

The reason 'the oil companies' want to explore on new land is that the 68 million acres under lease, but not producing, fall into one of two categories.

Either they have been explored, are in the process of producing, but not yet producing oil or gas. In which case they show up on Federal reports as 'non-producing.'

Or, they don't have commercial potential, and will never be drilled.

Oh, one other thing, Steny. Oil leases have finite lives. The companies which lease land have to develop the land within a stated period of time, or the land/mineral rights revert back to the Federal government.

But, all of this hot air Steny expends in the column has yet to address the $10B question!

When he finally gets down to that issue, Steny is sadly predictable. Much like his colleague in the Senate, and the next state, Joe Biden, Steny shamelessly steals his 'ideas' from others.

In this case, Steny's big idea is for the Federal government to spend the $10B creating new energy industries from the usual culprits....errr....sources: wind, solar, thermal, fuel cells, etc.

The usual mix of low-power, unreliable energy sources that will likely never be weaned off of Federal cash to become economically viable on their own.

But, oh, the parade of applicants and supplicants to a Democratic Congress dispensing $10B of energy tax credits, grants, and seed money.

Oh, the votes and voters $10B of Federal money could buy!

Ironically, Hoyer ends his paean to government control by writing,

"In the 21st century, it will take more than an accident of geography to be a world energy leader: It will take innovation, ingenuity and smart investment."

It sure will, Steny. But why would anyone think any of those would come from Federal government civil service drones, or political hacks like you?

No, Newt Gingrich has it right in his view of this issue, about which I wrote in this recent post.