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Pombo's Garage Sale of National Heirlooms

October 31, 2005

The House Resources Committee, chaired by Congressman Richard Pombo, has just recommended a budget “reconciliation” package that amounts to a garage sale of America’s heirlooms.

The package, adopted by the committee with little deliberation and no hearings, includes all of the following:

Opens the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the most biologically diverse landscape in the circumpolar north, to oil drilling.

Pombo and his supporters say that opening the Arctic Refuge to oil production would strike a blow for energy independence. Don’t believe them. America holds a mere 2 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves within her borders. We produce 8 percent of the world’s oil supply and we consume 25 percent of global oil production. We’re already sweeping the cupboards bare to feed our bad oil habit. Turning the refuge’s coastal plain into an industrial moonscape won’t make much of a dent in oil imports, won’t lower gasoline prices, and won’t fix our central energy problem – a dangerously high appetite for oil in a world where supply is having a harder time keeping up with demand.

Loosens up on offshore oil drilling, by allowing states to opt out of current drilling moratoria in exchange for a big cut of the royalty action.

Ditto above explanation. No matter how many derricks are planted in treasured lands and in our marine waters, our demand for oil is much higher than the oil-bearing rocks within our borders can yield. If we lack the will to unshackle our energy economy from oil, then we are tying our future to the awful regimes – Saudi Arabia and Iran, for example – that supply the global oil market that we buy from. We will find ourselves competing with China and other large nations for the same oil, bidding up prices and stirring up conflicts that few want and no one would benefit from. That would be a strategic error of colossal proportions.

Allows mining companies to buy federal land that may have minerals.

Mining companies wouldn’t have to show that they could build a viable mine on the lands they want to grab. If they want a piece of America’s national forests, Pombo’s budget package says it’s theirs, for the princely sum of $1,000 per acre. The legislation would bless a continuation of the heist known as the 1872 Mining Law – the antiquated statute that allows mining companies, many of them foreign owned, to extract minerals from public lands without paying a cent in royalties to the owners – you, me, and 295 million other taxpaying American citizens. This at a time when the federal government's debt and unfunded liabilities are growing like a thunderhead.

Pombo’s proposal has set a high mark in burdening the taxpayers, trampling our heritage, and shortchanging our future. Let’s hope this witch’s brew of shabbiness achieves the oblivion that it deserves. Happy Halloween.