Oct. 16 Lower Gas Prices Discussion

In the October 16, 2012 debate with President Obama and Mitt Romney the second question was – the Department of Energy said it wasn’t its job to help lower gas prices – do you agree? Obama said – the most important thing we can do is to make sure we control our own energy, we’ve increased production in oil, gas and coal and doubled efficiency standards so you can go twice as far on a gallon of gas and we’ve doubled clean energy production and it’s contributed to our lowering our oil imports to its lowest level; said he wants to build on what we’ve done to reduce demand and that’s how we keep gas prices lower; he talked about Romney’s plan to let oil companies write the energy policies and it doesn’t include clean energy; he pointed out that China and Europe are investing in clean energy and he wants to keep those jobs here. Romney said – the president was right production has increased but not on federal lands; he went on to discredit the present policies and the EPA and repeated getting North America energy independent in 8 years; he proposes more drilling and bringing the pipeline from Canada; he did say that manufacturing jobs are already coming back. Candy Crowley, the moderator, asked if we were looking at the new normal or is it within the purview (realm) of the government to bring prices down? Obama said - demand and production has gone up; we’re drilling more on public lands than in the previous administration, Romney shut down a coal plant while Governor of Massachusetts and now he’s suddenly a champion of coal; I’ve tried to be consistent – we made investments in clean coal technology.  

There are a few issues here so this will be a 2-part blog. First, Romney has repeatedly said Obama is against coal production – according to www.sourcewatch.org – this is not true. Second, I’ve already addressed in previous blogs the safety of pipelines and the quality of oil coming from Canada and more so I’m not repeating myself. Third, Romney knocked the EPA regulations that save lives and improves the quality of our air which I’ll address with Obama’s comment about Romney closing a coal plant. Via Politico Romney in a 2003 press conference said standing in front of the Salem Harbor Power Plant “I will not create jobs or hold jobs that kill people. And that plant, that plant kills people.” An enviros lawsuit filed in the state to shut it down cited nearly 300 violations of the Federal Clean Air Act between 2005 and 2009. Although Romney promised to shut down the plant, he never actually did; it's slated to go offline in 2014. The President was wrong in his statement that Romney closed a plant but I have issues with him now criticizing the EPA’s efforts to stop a company from killing people while in 2003 it sounded like he was giving them his support. The worse thing here is that Romney never kept his promise to save lives. The President’s untrue statement only points out that Romney is willing to trade-off people’s lives for business operations.