Ron Paul talks energy policy at Portsmouth NH Town Hall (Video)

Ron Paul laid out his plan for partially eliminating the Department of Energy while responding to a voter's question at a November 30, 2011 Town Hall style event held in Portsmouth, NH. The Republican presidential candidate and Texas Congressman also explained his free market approach to energy policy:

Voter: You propose to eliminate five departments. Let’s pick on one. Let’s pick on the Department of Energy. I’m not really sure what the Department of Energy really does, but how would you go about doing it?

How do you think you can accomplish it?

Would you replace it with another energy project?

Ron Paul: No – one out of five – Department of Energy – How do you go through the process? 

You go through the process by eliminating it, but you don’t eliminate every single function of the Department of Energy, because there will be some with nuclear materials and other things. That would be transferred.

The program that I’ve devised takes that into consideration.

But the question that we hear so often, and it’s a serious question, but it’s somewhat misleading. They say, “Well, what is the energy policy?”

“Who’s going to do the energy policy?”

Well, the market does the energy policy and not the government. Therefore you're not involved in trying to figure out who should get the subsidies and who should get the help, because the market would determine it.

What you want to do is get the regulations out so you don’t need a lot of regulators in the Department of Energy.

But the President would have a lot of authority to shrink the size of it. You would work with the Congress as well in making sure that some of the functions you need to take care of are transferred.

Because it’s in the Executive Branch, the President certainly does have the authority to just shrink the size of this thing and release some of the decision making to the people and talk Congress into making sure that you don’t give subsidies to corn, but not to some other substance.

They give us bad policy. They’ll subsidize corn.

But today I read, well I think it’s been known for a while, that we probably use up more hydrocarbons making corn than we do otherwise. But there was an article today that I’d never thought about and they said, “Boy if you really want to protection your…”

This guy at least was posing as a mechanical expert, he said, “Don’t ever use that ethanol, it’s really bad for your engine.”

I’ve never heard of that one. Have you heard of that? I wouldn’t be surprised.

But you know, this is like governments shouldn’t be making these decisions. I want them out of that.

You don’t need many people to do it, but you could protect some vital functions by transferring it to other – like if it had to do with nuclear waste or nuclear power, you could have the DOD take care of it. 

Ron Paul talks energy at Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition - video, transcript

Ron Paul fielded two questions on energy policy at the October 22, 2011 Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition Presidential Forum in Des Moines, Iowa. The event was sponsored by the Iowa Energy Forum, an arm of the American Petroleum Institute sponsored America's Energy Forum.

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

Ron Paul: Well, my plan is we need to produce energy the same way we produce cell phones. We need to get the government out of the way. We need a lot of competition. And we need to deregulate.

I’ve been in Washington off and on for a good many years. I’ve met a lot of bureaucrats and I’ve met a lot of politicians. They don’t know anything about energy. Why should they make the plan? They have a responsibility for providing the right environment, and that is the market environment.

The point that I’m making about the cell phones. The markets, in spite of all our problems, the markets still deliver cell phones to us. Can you imagine if we gave a contract to the Department of Homeland Security to provide cell phones and they provided one company and they set the prices? It would cost a lot of money and the phones wouldn’t work.

So we don’t need a policy other than the policy of the marketplace. We need to understand property rights. We need to understand contract rights. We need to understand competition. But today – and of course the Obama administration doesn’t understand any of this, so I reject everything that they do because they interject, like putting on moratoriums and supporting regulations.

But the sooner you can get to the concepts of property rights and contracts – all of Texas energy was developed without government. When we came into the Union, we essentially had no government property. But out in the West now, where some of this oil shale and other things are, so much of it is on government owned land. We need to get this land in ownership of private property owners and then we need to get the government out of the way.

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.

Well, there isn’t one policy because the overall policy of interference, the policy that this administration has followed is intervention. He follows a whole philosophy of economic intervention, so you have to reverse the policy of Keynesian economic intervention and re-instill in the American people the concept and the understanding of how real free markets work and how money works.

So that is what needs to happen, but all the policies that result from intervention disturb the markets. And you can’t do that unless you have a lot of other things. In order to reverse that you have to deregulate across the board. You have to change the tax code. You have to have the sound money system. You have to have better trade policies. And all of these things would generate the type of energy that we need. 

Video of Ron Paul's remarks at the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition (energy segment starts at 15:20):

2011 CNN Tea Party GOP Debate: Energy Roundup

Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney all sounded off on energy issues during the September 12, 2011 CNN Tea Party Republican Presidential Debate in Tampa, Florida.

Herman Cain on the EPA

Question: The United States has an abundance of coal, oil, natural gas and uranium. The American people have been told for decades that energy independence is a top priority. What will you do in your first 100 days in office to assure the American people that energy independence will finally become reality.

Herman Cain: The first thing that I would do in order to assure that we get on the road to energy independence, and I do believe that we can because we do have the natural resources to do so, we've got to remove some of those barriers out of the way that are being created by the federal government. I would start with an EPA that's gone wild. That's where we start.

I would put together a regulatory reduction commission for every agency starting with the EPA. This regulatory reduction commission -- one of my guiding principles is if you want to solve a problem go to the source closest to the problem. So the people that I would appoint to that commission will be people who have been abused by the EPA. That would be the commission that would straighten out the regulatory burden.

Newt Gingrich on tax breaks for oil companies

Wolf Bitzer: Speaker Gingrich, some of the biggest companies in the United States, the oil companies, they got -- I guess some would call government handouts in the form of tax breaks, tax exemptions, loopholes. They're making billions and billions of dollars. Is that fair? 


Newt Gingrich: You know, I thought for a second, you were going to refer to General Electric, which has paid no taxes.

You know, I… I was… I was astonished the other night to have the president there in the joint session with the head of G.E. sitting up there and the president talking about taking care of loopholes. And I thought to myself, doesn't he realize that every green tax credit is a loophole...


... that everything he wants… everything General Electric is doing is a loophole? Now, why did we get to breaks for ethanol, breaks for oil and gas, et cetera? We got to them because of this idea, which the young man just represented. If we make you… if we make it possible for you to keep more of your own money, you will do more of it. 



We have a simple choice. We can depend on Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, or we can encourage development in the United States of manufacturing, as Rick said. We can encourage development of oil and gas. We can do it by saying we're going to let you keep more of your money if you create more of what we want. I'm for an energy- independent America, and that means I favor people who create energy.

Ron Paul on the DOE:

What we need to do is cut the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, and all these departments, and get rid of them.

Jon Huntsman on energy independence:

... this country needs to wean itself from its heroin-like addiction to foreign oil. We need energy independence desperately in this country.

Mitt Romney on energy security

We're an energy rich nation. We're living like an energy poor nation.

And if we're going to get this economy going, we've got to… have energy security in this country by developing our energy resources.

Visit CNN.com for rush transcripts of tonight's debate:

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/2011.09.12.html

Ron Paul talks ethanol in Iowa

Iowans Fueled with Pride has posted a video of Republican Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul fielding a question about ethanol at the Iowa State Fair on YouTube.

Watch the video:

Transcript of Ron Paul's comments on ethanol:

Iowans Fueled with Pride: Congressman, the recent introduction of the EPA appropriations bill would effectively ban E15…

Ron Paul: It would ban what?

Iowans Fueled with Pride: It would ban E15 ethanol gasoline. 

Ron Paul: Yeah?

Iowans Fueled with Pride: I was wondering if you would oppose that bill?

Ron Paul: I don’t want to ban anything. But I don’t want any mandates either.

I want ethanol to exist, but I don’t want to artificially boost it.

I don’t want to ban ethanol, but I want the market to determine, you know, which is the best energy.

I don’t believe much in tariffs or mandates, but I wouldn’t have banning anything.

What would that do, it would ban would ban the production of ethanol?

Iowans Fueled with Pride: Yup, the introduction of E15 gasoline, 15% blend. It would ban that. 

Ron Paul: Yeah, but I wonder. You would think the environmentalists would want that. There are some people who want to ban it?

I think the market should decide if it’s a good idea and it’s economic.

Iowans Fueled with Pride: Its Republican Congressmen from the oil states that have introduced it.

Ron Paul: Oh, they want to do that?

See, one minute they give an answer to one person, the other one has to come back and give an answer for themselves. All this stuff can be sorted out through the marketplace.

No appropriations and no mandates. If you try to apply those, everything’s voluntary and the consumer gets to decide which products will survive.

For instance, we have the ethanol from corn because of subsidies. We have tax imports as well as mandates. In Texas they could raise sugar cane like they raise sugar cane in Brazil. But we don’t allow it because we don’t give the same tax credits and things.

So you want the market to work and sort it out.

You don’t want to mandate it or prohibit it. 

Ron Paul on energy subsidies and tax credits (Video)

Texas Congressman and Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul talked his reasons for opposing energy subsidies and supporting energy tax credits in his Weekly Update for June 27, 2011. Paul also reiterated his opposition to ethanol mandates, while calling for tax credits for vehicles that run on natural gas and deregulation of the offshore drilling industry.

Transcript of Ron Paul's comments on energy:

As the economy continues in its downward spiral and talks in Congress about reducing spending have only amounted to political theater, the subject of how the tax code treats energy has become a topic of controversy. Specifically, should we subsidize, enforce mandates, or give tax credits and deductions to industries like ethanol and natural gas? Having a thriving energy market domestically is a good thing and something the government should not hinder. Not only would decreasing our dependence on foreign oil simplify our foreign policy, but it would greatly enhance our anemic economy at home.

Of course, the government should neither inhibit nor subsidize any particular type of energy. While many people agree with that statement, there is much confusion over the difference between government subsidies and tax credits or deductions. The difference is night and day, yet so many times they are all lumped together as evil government handouts. A subsidy IS a government handout. It amounts to the government taking money from the people and giving it to a favored interest. It is the worst sort of market manipulation and it is something I can never support. This kind of government mischief is anathema to the Constitution and the principles of freedom and the free market.

By contrast, with tax credits and deductions, industries, business, and individuals simply get to keep more of the money they have earned. Ideally, the tax code should not be used for social engineering, but, until we have true tax reform, I will always support tax credits and deductions that keep more dollars in the private sector where they are spent, saved, or invested. This means I will support tax credits and deductions for energy producers, farmers, homeschoolers, family child care expenditures, expenses of evacuees from disaster areas, and even adoption expenses. I’ve almost never met a tax cut, deduction, or credit I didn’t like. Any measure that keeps money in the private sector to spend, save or invest, rather than allowing the government to waste or misallocate is a win for the economy.

Inequities in the tax code dealing with tax credits should be solved by giving all participants equal treatment.

I oppose ethanol mandates because I do not think anyone should be forced to use or buy ethanol. Ethanol mandates often serve as corporate welfare for big agriculture ethanol producers. The marketplace should decide whether or not to use ethanol, and producers of ethanol have to discover if they can produce it at a price that makes good business sense. No industry should be allowed to use legislation to create a “market” for its products. The real reason ethanol mandates continue to surface in federal legislation is that agribusiness continues to have one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington.

Furthermore, while I do not support providing federal grants to any industry, I do support the tax credits contained in the NAT Gas Act, HR 1380. These credits reduce taxes for the production or purchase of vehicles that run on American-made natural gas. These credits are not subsidies. Of course, we should repeal federal barriers to energy production and reduce taxes on all forms of energy. Therefore, I have also introduced the Affordable Gas Price Act HR 1102 which would remove governmental barriers to offshore drilling, encourage private investment in new refineries and suspend taxes on gasoline when the price at the pump reaches a certain threshold. Lowering taxes to encourage the domestic production of energy and getting government out of the way of the American energy market is not a government giveaway; it is the way it should be in a free country.