Newt's op-ed on Warner-Webb energy bill

From the op-ed published by The Virginian-Pilot:

The Webb-Warner bill would establish a revenue-sharing plan that would direct half the public revenue from offshore energy development to the federal government and half to Virginia.

The commonwealth would receive 37.5 percent of any revenues, and an additional 12.5 percent would be set aside for land and water conservation projects, public transportation projects and alternative energy development projects.

The offshore oil and gas industry could add more than 15,000 jobs in Virginia and add $3.2 billion to the commonwealth's economy, according to a 2009 report by the American Energy Alliance.

The Norfolk area is primed to benefit from that growth due to its good location and harbor, with its shipbuilding infrastructure already in place. The bill could give Norfolk an early-mover advantage, since the Obama administration has blocked leases off other Atlantic states as well.

The bill also calls for a new resource assessment of the mid-Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf.

The last estimate was completed in 1984, using technology that is now decades out of date. That estimate suggested the area could have as much as 750 million barrels of oil, but with new exploration and drilling technologies, it could contain billions of barrels.

Outdated research like what we have for offshore Virginia has often dramatically underestimated the potential of American energy. The estimate of the Bakken formation in North Dakota, for instance, has jumped 2,500 percent since 1995 due to new technology. The amount of natural gas in shale has increased our estimated supply of natural gas fifteenfold in the last decade.

Just a fourfold increase in the oil estimated off Virginia would mean reserves of 3 billion barrels. That supply would be worth hundreds of billions of dollars, and under Virginia's revenue-sharing plan, half the revenues it produced would go directly to the commonwealth and millions more would go to the Virginians working in jobs created in areas like Norfolk.

New oilfield innovation has turned around a 25-year decline in American oil production, and domestic supplies are growing once again, but American production could grow even faster if President Barack Obama's unnecessary regulatory barriers were removed.

The plan to allow Virginia to move ahead with offshore drilling is a truly bipartisan proposal.

The Senate bill is sponsored by the Democratic senators and supported by Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell and by both candidates for Virginia's U.S. Senate seat in 2012, Democrat Tim Kaine and Republican George Allen.

The House should move to pass the bill immediately and challenge Senate Democrats to approve the proposal of their colleagues. Then Obama would have to decide if he wanted to veto a plan that would create jobs, increase revenues and produce more American energy.

Newt's "10 Steps to a Stable Governing Majority"

From his weekly newsletter:

1. Do not focus on November 2012. Instead, focus on January 2021. The goal between now and January 2021 should be to govern so well, communicate so clearly, and include Americans from all backgrounds so consistently that a second wave of House Republicans will be sworn into office in January 2021 to build a better future around our values and principles.

2. Fight for the values of the American people. Set up a series of choices in which you are defending the values and beliefs of the vast majority of American and the Democrats are defending those of the Washington establishment and left-wing elite.

3. American Exceptionalism Matters. Americans overwhelmingly believe America is an exceptional country. Yet President Obama and many Democrats seem intent on denying it. This has clear implications for policy debates, which can be framed around the historic American habits and principles that are the source of our exceptionalism.

4. Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less. Americans want an American energy policy (see our work at American Solutions) while Obama wants to borrow from the Chinese to buy oil from the Brazilians. An American energy plan from the House GOP would create a clear policy choice and put Republicans on the side of the American people.

5. Focus on Communication. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had a rule: "First you win the argument then you win the vote." In the end, having the right policies won't matter if you fail to communicate them effectively. The budget debate will be an example of where this is essential.

6. Inclusion, not outreach. Outreach is when insiders make a decision and then start calling people to tell them what it is. Inclusion is when they are in the room to discuss the challenges and help reach the decisions. Inclusion will require deep changes in scheduling, staffing, internships, communications, and networking.

7. Be smart, not cheap. Get to a balanced budget by being smart rather than cheap. Cutting spending in areas that produce long term savings, such as the National Institutes of Health is destructive to the goal of a sustainable, balanced budget.

8. Boldness will be rewarded. House Republicans should consider it their duty to pass the changes America needs and rally the American people to put pressure on the 23 Democratic Senate seats and the Democratic president. The country will only understand the need to replace Democrats in the Senate and the White House if they see House Republicans offering bold solutions. House GOP timidity would lead the tea parties and activists (including talk radio) to focus their frustration on House Republicans. Boldness will convince them to focus on Democratic opposition to our solutions.

9. A Contract with America in 2012. Begin now to develop bold proposals for a 2012 Contract with America including a Tenth Amendment implementation bill and a job creation bill, featuring tax cuts, deregulation, litigation reform, and American energy development. The American people need to see what a Republican team would be like so they have a lot of reasons to give us 40 more House seats, a dozen Senate seats and the White House.

10. Cheerful persistence will be the key habit for success. There will inevitably be tension, arguments, frustrations and internal dissent and conflict. Working through issues with the leadership so a unified Republican team can be creative and effective will take enormous patience and persistence. It is best done cheerfully.

Newt also mentions that the Gingrich Foundation is honoring the Autism Society this month.

Drillgate: Department of Interior cover up

When Congress lifted the 27-year-ban on offshore drilling in September 2008, many were skeptical if Barack Obama would actually allow for exploration if he ended up winning the election. Those doubts have proved to be well-deserved.

Any federal agency will undergo a "public comment" period when undergoing a a rule change such as that. That part of the process had already started by the time Obama was inaugurated. "Ken Salazar, Obama’s new Secretary of Interior, determined the decision about new offshore drilling was so important that he ordered a six-month extension to the comment period," writes Vince Haley on biggovernment.com. Haley, Newt Gingrich's former research director and current head of Renewing American Leadership, quotes Salazar a couple of months into the new administration saying that Obama sought “to make sure that we have an open and transparent government," adding “these are not decisions that are going to be made behind closed doors.”

Short of "maximizing the opportunity for the public to give us guidance on what it is that they want to do," as Salazar put it," Interior has yet to release the count -- even though the comment period ended five months ago. As could be surmised, the number of pro-drilling comments was much higher than those against. In fact, 530,000 comments were submitted. Roughly 350,000, or 2/3, favored the expansion of drilling; of those, "American Solutions alone delivered 90,358 pro-drilling comments, one of the largest submissions for a single organization."

Sensing something was fishy, Newt's 527, American Solutions began to request information about the tabulation, which wrapped up on September 25. A month later, after no results were released but "sources [indicating]" that the comments were already counted, the group filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. On that same day, a spokesman for the Minerals Management Service (MMS) said a "detailed breakdown" would be released soon.

Two weeks later, MMS says they do not have the final count and, in the words of American Solutions, say "the request was too large and asked for justification why releasing the information was in the public interest."

With nothing coming forth, a month after that "transparent" replay, American Solutions "filed a second, more specific, FOIA request with MMS explaining why it was in the public's interest to release the information." Ten days later, the agency says they will respond by January 19th -- only to push it back again using a 10-workday extension as the excuse.

Finally, MMS released internal e-mails, one of which Tyler writes about:

In an email dated October 27, 2009, Liz Birnbaum, director of the Minerals Management Service, informs other Interior officials that a preliminary tabulation of the results of the comment period had not yet gone to Secretary Salazar, adding “[s]o the Secretary can honestly say in response to any questions that he’s [SIC] has not yet seen the analysis of the comments -- staff is still working on it. I did, however, confirm to him the 2-1 split that these guys [at American Solutions] are emphasizing.”

That shows that the cover up began almost instantly after the early results came in.

Still, the day after the damning e-mails were released, MMS denies having a final tally, and claim that is the reason it has not been released to the public.

A second bath of documents were supposed to be released due to the FOIA request, but American Solutions' website says: "MMS wrote to American Solutions that it had taken a five business-day extension for processing the second half of the documents requested by the FOIA, due to inclement weather that had closed down federal offices. The letter was sent six days after MMS had promised that the documents would be delivered." Two days later, the agency says the papers in questions will be released "as soon as possible."

On the very next day, in a seperate matter, MMS informs the Justice Department they missed "a court-ordered environmental analysis of drilling in Alaska. The assessment began a year before and is required to be completed before any new drilling can begin in the Beaufort, Bering, and Chukchi seas."

In the latest news surrounding Drillgate, American Solutions filed another FOIA request on March 2nd after confirmation that public comments ran 2-1.

This is another example of how government runs. Does anyone want this style of bureaucracy deciding when and where -- and even whether -- a life-saving operation will occur?