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Even worse than Congress’s recent NON-reforming “banking reform” bill, are its feckless and lame attempts at self-vindication over the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico .
The energy industry is, like virtually ALL sectors of American industry, very highly and tightly regulated and at great cost to you and I. Estimates are that we spend well over $10 BILLION/year regulating energy in the U.S.
Think about THAT for just a second!
We're spending over $300 BILLION/year regulating offshore drilling alone.....and THIS is what we get?
What other entity gets rewarded (expanded in size and scope with a budget increase) for its failures?
ONLY government agencies.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, also known as the Bureau of Ocean Energy (BOE), and formerly known as the Minerals Management Service (MMS) – Annual Budget: $310 million (USD) in 2009...sure to go UP in 2011 and beyond.
The EPA has requested $10.020 BILLION (USD) for Fiscal Year 2011 in its discretionary budget authority.
And these are just some of the direct costs we pay for in the form of taxes. The “indirect costs” of this regulation are the REAL costs for you and I, as the preponderance of the weight of all these regulations is found in how much they raise the cost of all the energy we use daily.
Government’s taxes and the costs of complying with its regulations are merely a “cost of doing business” for the energy companies and so, those costs are ALL happily passed on to you and I in the form of higher energy prices.
OK, so even if you don’t want to quibble over the cost of energy, don’t you think we deserve a LOT more “bang for our buck?”
You mean to say that, “All we get for this doubling the price of a gallon of gasoline is this crumby oil slick in the Gulf?”
