Department of Energy

Does anybody out there have any memory of the reason given for the establishment of the DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY -- during the Carter Administration?

Anybody?

Anything?

No?

Didn't think so!

I was working for a local public utility when the DOE was formed. It simply represented another level of bureaucracy that we had to deal with. For a few years, I chaired the reporting committee for electronic reporting to DOE for GUIDE. So, why did President Carter establish DOE and what has it cost us?

Bottom line ... We've spent several hundred billion dollars in support of an agency ...the reason for which not one person who reads this can remember.

Ready???????

It was very simple...

And at the time everybody thought it very appropriate...

The 'Department of Energy' was instituted on 8-04-1977 --

TO LESSEN OUR DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL.

Remember those days of fuel shortages and long lines waiting to gas the car?

AND NOW IT'S 2009,

32 YEARS LATER ...
AND THE BUDGET FOR THIS
NECESSARY DEPARTMENT
IS AT
$24.2 BILLION A YEAR
IT HAS
16,000
FEDERAL EMPLOYEES
AND APPROXIMATELY
100,000
CONTRACT EMPLOYEES

AND what a JOB DOE HAS DONE!

We are are now completely independent of foreign oil – NOT. We’ve opened new oil and gas fields in the northern states, Alaska, off-shore California, and the Rocky Mountain regions – NOT. Our industries are humming on low energy costs – NOT. What HAS DOE been doing?

THIS IS WHERE YOU SLAP YOUR FOREHEAD AND SAY 'WHAT WAS I THINKING?'

Ah, yes, good old bureaucracy...

And NOW we want to turn the Banking System, Health Care & the Auto Industry over to government?

Let’s take an economists view of ObamaCare.

Economists love nothing more than curling up in front of a fireplace with a financial analysis of government policy, allowing the numbers to wash over them like a John Updike novel — or in this administration, more like a Stephen King horrorfest. For the rest of us, though, the numbers and calculations can prove daunting. Keith Hennessey, former Assistant to the U.S. President for Economic Policy and Director of the U.S. National Economic Council, puts the CBO’s latest killer analysis of the House health-care reform bill into graphic form, where everyone can be horrified equally.

For a baseline demonstration of the numbers, Hennessey charts the spending and taxes in the House bill, along with the expected revenue of the proposed tax increase — the “surtax” on the rich — over the next ten years:

Despite Mr. Obama’s promises, the cost-saving techniques in ObamaCare only offset about a quarter of all the new spending in the plan by 2019. The offsetting tax increase, Rangel’s surtax, will only generate $87 billion a year by that time, slightly more than half of the next spending increase — and note that revenues almost flatline while spending increases at a much higher rate. What does that mean for the second decade? Hennessey has a chart for that, too:

By the time we get to 2029, ObamaCare will run a $205 billion deficit in that year alone, almost as much as the CBO estimate of the program’s entire first decade. It’s a devastating analysis of ObamaCare, one which Hennessey calls a TKO of the proposal. These charts certainly make that case.

Be sure to read all of his analysis. Curl up in front of a fire. In fact, throw John Conyers’ copy on the logs, since he won’t be reading it before he votes. The first thing that comes to mind. . . the Department of Energy.

NO! NOT AGAIN!

I may not be able to fix stupid, but I don’t have to reelect it!