Michele Bachmann talks energy at Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition Presidential Forum

Michele Bachmann fielded two questions about energy policy at the October 22, 2011 Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition Presidential Form in Des Moines, Iowa. The forum was sponsored by the Iowa Energy Forum, itself a part of the American Petroleum Institute sponsored America’s Energy Forum.

“I will shut down the EPA,” Bachmann vowed during her stump speech. “I will shut down the Department of Energy.” 

Question #1: What is your comprehensive plan to shape your administration’s future energy policy. Please include how this vision differs from that of the current administration.

Michele Bachmann: My plan on energy is 180 degrees different than the current administration’s plan on energy. And I have been fighting this during my entire time in Congress.

This is one of the best stories that the United States of America has to tell. Earlier this year, the Congressional Research Service issued a report that said that the United States of America is the number one energy resource rich nation in the world. God has given us such a tremendous gift.

If we legalize American energy production, which I have been advocating throughout my time in Congress, we will create very quickly 1.4 million high paying jobs. We’ll increase domestic energy supplies 50 percent and that will bring $800 billion into the United State Treasury. 

We have more oil in three Western states in the form of shale oil than all of the oil in Saudi Arabia. We have 25 percent of all the coal in the world. We have some of the largest find in natural gas found recently in Pennsylvania. We have trillions of cubic square feet of natural gas -- including solar, including wind, including biofuels right here in Iowa. We’ve got it all.

And so I want to legalize it all. And I also want to change the EPA and get rid of the IPA. We have 50 EPA’s at each state level. So I want to get rid of it, so we can open up American energy production and be the leader of the world and be the head and not the tail.

Question #2: If you could reverse one energy related policy decision from the last three years, what would it be? And what would you have done differently?

Michele Bachmann: There are so many. But I would say that the one that has really hurt the economy in a most devastating way was the moratorium that President Obama put on after the oil spill that occurred.

There was devastation that occurred because of the oil flow that occurred, but there was nothing that was worse than the moratorium that he put on. The Gulf Coast region still continues to feel the effects from the moratoriums.

Here’s something else with energy. I had toured ANWR and toured the ANWR region in 2008, which by the way is the most perfect place on the planet to drill for oil, and we should be drilling in ANWR.

Every lease that gets purchased for drilling, before anything happens, there is a radical environmental group that files a lawsuit to drive up the price on those leases. We need to end that practice. And we need to set up special courts to deal with that, because we have seen our energy policy absolutely tied up in knots again. 

I have spent years working on this issue. I know what needs to be done and I have proposed an energy policy that will open up, unlock, unleash and create high paying jobs all across the United States of America. This is the first and easiest thing that the next President of the United States can do. And this will be the treasure trove that God has given to the United States to turn economy around. And I can’t wait to do it.

Full video of Michele Bachmann's comments on energy at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition Presidential Forum is available on C-Span: 

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/302136-1