The gang that couldn’t shoot straight

{mosads}
Compounding the folly, the proposal would create fresh job losses – adding to the 9 percent unemployment rate still plaguing America’s families. A study by Louisiana State University finance professor Joseph Mason concludes that similar proposals would result in 155,000 job losses at the cost of $68 billion in lost wages.
 
On the other hand, if we were to roll back restrictions on domestic energy production, we would create jobs, bring in more tax revenue to the government and produce American energy. According to Wood Mackenzie, greater access for domestic exploration would create over one million new jobs, yield an additional $127 billion in federal revenue by 2020 and give us an additional 1.5 billion barrels of domestic oil and natural gas.
 
It’s important to understand that oil and gas companies support 9.2 million American jobs. Reinvestments in energy production provided the United States with a private sector stimulus package of $470 billion in spending, wages, and dividends in 2010, a bright spot indeed in an otherwise gloomy economic picture. The federal government has also been a big winner.

Each and every day, the oil and gas industry pays Uncle Sam over $86 million in income taxes, royalties, bonuses and rents. It’s also worth noting that it’s millions of ordinary middle-class American investors who own most oil company stock through mutual funds, pension funds, and retirement accounts.
 
If these elected officials were less interested in scoring political points and were truly interested in shrinking the deficit, putting Americans back to work and growing the economy, they would abandon efforts to hamper an invaluable driver of American prosperity. It is time for members of Congress who are serious about deficit reduction, economic growth and energy security to stop acting like demagogues with energy issues and support greater domestic production and legitimate tax reform that simplifies the tax code rather than using it to punitively target select industries.
 
Thomas J. Pyle is the President for the Institute for Energy Research