Obama Should Kick The Government’s Ass

Obama Should Kick The Government’s Ass

Loath to waste a good crisis, the progressive consensus is that America’s overwhelming thirst for oil is the ultimate cause of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Self-styled progressives argue that if only the government would take more action to regulate energy and encourage the development of alternatives to traditional fossil fuels, disasters like the Gulf Oil Spill could be avoided. As if. Let’s take a brief look at the role our government itself played in causing the spill, and see if we can’t identify who’s ass Obama should kick.

To begin with, it was the Democratically-controlled U.S. Congress that unanimously passed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, which outrageously set a mere $75 million limit on damages that oil companies would be liable for in the event of offshore oil spills. Imagine telling motorists that they wouldn’t be responsible for damages above a certain amount caused by automobile accidents, and that the U.S. taxpayer would simply pick up the tab for the rest. If you can see that this would encourage motorists to drive less safely, take more risks, and cause more accidents, you can see how government meddling may have some small part to play in the Gulf Oil Spill.

Then there’s the matter of deepwater drilling itself. Ever try to make quick movements underwater? You probably found that the water density makes movement more difficult than in the air. The deeper the water is, the greater the density is, creating bigger engineering challenges and more risks. Yet this didn’t stop the government and its regulators from stopping at nothing to push oil drilling into deeper waters. With the Deep Water Royalty Relief Act of 1995 and the 2005 Energy Policy Act (which then-Senator Obama voted for), the government used taxpayer money to encourage deepwater drilling (and what the text of the Energy Policy Act itself describes as ultra-deepwater drilling).

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