House GOP budget takes aim at Obama’s energy agenda

House Republicans’ budget plan promotes longtime GOP energy priorities, including greatly expanding domestic oil-and-gas production and rolling back environmental regulations.

The budget, which cuts $5.3 trillion in spending over the next decade, takes aim at President Obama’s energy policies, arguing that they put a massive burden on the economy and cost jobs.

“The President’s energy policies have been characterized by punitive regulations on economically competitive sources of energy, coupled with reckless spending on uncompetitive alternatives,” the plan, which was announced Tuesday by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), stated.

“This budget reverses the President’s policies that drive up gas prices, and instead promotes an all-of-the-above strategy for unlocking American energy production to help lower costs, create jobs and reduce dependence on foreign oil.”

The GOP plan blasted the Obama administration’s 2009 decision to green-light a $535 million loan guarantee to Solyndra, a California solar firm that filed for bankruptcy in September 2011.

Republicans have pounced on the bankruptcy, alleging that officials missed red flags about the company’s financial problems and claiming that the loan was a sop to Obama’s campaign donors. The White House and administration officials have strongly denied the allegations.

The Ryan budget calls for getting the “government out of the business of picking winners and losers,” a common GOP criticism of Obama administration policies that promote renewable-energy projects.

The plan would “immediately terminate all programs that allow government to play venture capitalist with taxpayers’ money.” In that vein, Republicans have particularly slammed the Energy Department over its investments in clean-energy projects.

“This budget would roll back federal intervention and expensive corporate welfare funding directed to favored industriesy,” the budget stated. “Instead, it would promote policies aimed at reliable energy, lower energy prices, greater revenue generation through prosperity, and market-based solutions for sustainable energy.”

And the plan calls for a massive expansion of domestic oil-and-gas production.

“In stark contrast to the President’s energy policy, this budget promotes new energy exploration to discover unknown energy resources, generate millions of new high-paying jobs and help fund needed infrastructure initiatives.” 

The plan assumes increased revenue from the drilling expansion.

In addition, the plan calls on Congress to “limit the EPA’s discretionary power.” The GOP has long argued that Environmental Protection Agency regulations burden the economy, and House Republicans have passed several bills to delay or overturn the regulations. The bills have not moved forward in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

The plan “scales back spending on government bureaucracies that are seeking to impose a job-destroying national energy tax.”

And the budget would maintain core energy research, while “paring back duplicative spending and non-core functions, such as applied and commercial research or development projects best left to the private sector.”

Read more about the GOP budget plan here.