Key Vote NO on the Energy Policy Modernization Act, S. 2012

As one of our over 5.7 million FreedomWorks activists nationwide, I urge you to contact your senators and ask them to vote NO on the Energy Policy Modernization Act. S. 2012. This bill contains a grab bag of small provisions that add up to a major expansion of the federal government’s incessant meddling in the energy sector.

This bill largely deals with subsidies – the federal government making top-down decisions on what projects and industries to fund over others in the energy industry. Among the winners of this bill would be hydroelectric and geothermal power, various energy job training programs, carbon fiber recycling, new biofuels, and alternative fuel vehicles. While many of these industries may be praiseworthy, the federal government should not be propping them up if they are not viable on the market.

The one positive that the bill’s supporters tend to point to is that it would expedite the process for liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports. But this one – admittedly very good – item does not excuse the rest of the bill.

Perhaps the worst single provision of this bill is that it permanently reauthorizes the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which is a fund that the government uses to purchase new federal lands. The federal government already owns massive swaths of land, including hundreds of millions of acres west of the Mississippi. Besides the federalist principle that the states and localities themselves should be allowed to manage their own land, the federal government already cannot maintain the land it currently owns and shouldn’t be encouraged to keep buying up more.

The focus of much of this bill is merely on “modernizing” and streamlining government activities in the energy sector that should be left to the private sector and the states in the first place. Conservatives should be focused on rolling back the government’s ubiquitous intervention in the energy sector, not improving and enabling it.

Please contact your senators and ask that they vote NO on the Energy Policy Modernization Act, S. 2012. FreedomWorks will count the vote on this bill as a Key Vote when calculating our Congressional Scorecard for 2016. The scorecard is used to determine eligibility for the FreedomFighter Award, which recognizes Members of Congress who consistently vote to support economic freedom and individual liberty.

Sincerely,

Adam Brandon
CEO, FreedomWorks