Energy

If budget negotiators have to rely on just two buckets—spending and taxes—to control the huge deficits we’re facing, they can’t get there. We need a third bucket—and we’ve got it in energy. And it’s fuller and deeper than anyone imagined just a few years ago.

- U.S. Chamber President and CEO Tom Donohue

Washington leaders are doing the hard math of solving our debt and deficits crisis. The trouble is, they’re only working with two sets of variables: taxes and spending.

Add energy and we can balance the fiscal equation.

A new abundance of American energy can create a larger tax base and drive higher revenues and direct royalties—all of which will make our deficits lower and reduce debt levels. Every dollar in revenue generated from energy is a dollar we won’t have to take from defense or entitlements, or raise in taxes.

Where We Stand
American economic prosperity is closely tied to the availability of affordable, abundant, and clean energy supplies. If we continue to restrict domestic production and refuse to build new energy infrastructure, jobs will be shipped overseas and America will be less competitive.

Environmental issues - including global climate change - must be answered with commonsense solutions that protect American jobs and economic growth.

Expanding on the policies of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the Chamber believes Congress and the executive branch must work together to increase energy efficiency, increase energy production from ALL sources including coal, oil, gas, nuclear, as well as renewable and alternative energies, update and expand energy infrastructure, power generation, and the electricity grid and expand investment in the development of new clean energy technologies.

What's Happening Now
The Keystone XL Pipeline, which would carry oil from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf of Mexico would provide access to North American energy and create an estimated 250,000 American jobs in the long-term as well as much needed tax revenue along the route.  The pipeline would provide United States with the opportunity to access safe, reliable, and affordable energy supplies from Canada, and reduce our need to import crude oil from less stable countries and regions of the world.  

The Administration has recently delayed the decision to move forward with the Keystone XL pipeline until for an additional 14 months, a delay that will be detrimental to our increasingly failing economy. Click here to urge the President to move forward with this decision today. 

Visit www.FuelingUs.org to learn more