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August 11, 2008

Drilling is “One Subject”

Quote of the Day:

“Drill, drill, drill!”
— Larry Kudlow, “Kudlow & Company” CNBC

Subject: Drilling is “One Subject”

There’s long been a moratorium on drilling for oil and natural gas on most of the outer continental shelf. This moratorium expires every year, unless it’s renewed, which it constantly is. And yet, Congress has never actually voted on this moratorium. Instead . . .

The moratorium is always attached to completely unrelated spending bills in order to secure passage and sidestep a potential presidential veto.

This could not happen if Downsize DC’s “One Subject at a Time Act” was the law of the land.

The Republicans are currently doing a sit-in on Capitol Hill to draw attention to their desire to lift the drilling moratorium. What this means is that they want an up-or-down vote on the moratorium as a single-subject stand-alone bill. The Democratic leadership doesn’t want to give them this because they expect that the moratorium would fail such a vote.

This is a perfect opportunity to urge Congress to introduce and pass the “One Subject at a Time Act” (OSTA) Send Congress a message asking for this. And, if you favor drilling, use your personal comments to say so. Give the drilling moratorium as an example of why we need OSTA. You can send your message here.

Given the trans-partisan nature of Downsize DC we probably have a lot of people on our list who oppose drilling for environmental reasons. As always, with any Downsize DC campaign, they are free to sit out on this one. But here are a few points to consider . . .

* Many environmentalists have switched to favoring offshore drilling because it would help to reduce natural oil seeps that are harming the environment in places like Santa Barbara, California. We’ve written about this on our blog here.

* Most the off-shore finds will probably be natural gas. To the extent that we can replace coal with natural gas we will reduce air pollution and carbon emissions.

* Offshore drilling could expand the economy, making the gradual conversion to alternative energy sources more affordable. Economic growth expands research and innovation while enabling consumers to better afford green alternatives. Consumers have already demonstrated a willingness to pay premium prices for such alternatives. The richer we become the more this will happen.

Progress on energy efficiency and affordable alternatives is happening at a rapid rate. We provide examples on our blog almost daily. If you’re not reading our blog, you should.

You can find examples of energy innovations here, here, and here.

Please consider visiting our blog daily. And sign up with Digg so you can Digg our articles and promote them to others.

* Send a message to Congress in support of OSTA

* Visit our blog daily

* Create a Digg account so you can promote our blog

* And please consider making a contribution to further our work.

Thank you for being a part of the growing Downsize DC army.

Jim Babka
President
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.

If your comment is off-topic for this post, please email us at feedback@downsizedc.org

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