The Patriot Post® · If They Were Actually Serious About Jobs...

My congressman, Jeff Landry (R-LA) is one of the most conservative representatives in Washington, and sits on the Natural Resources Committee. When Republicans are in the majority, this is one of the most important committees on the Hill, in terms of making sure that America has the resources she needs to supply her people and industries with the energy and raw materials to be the capitalist industrial power that is – or rather, was – the envy of the world. When Democrats are in charge, it’s a dangerous tool of the eco-fascist and Marxist left, pushing environmental laws, disguised as “environmental protection” that are actually intended to destroy private property rights and restrict our ability to use our natural resources, and ultimately, bring about the end of capitalism.

Since the 1960s, environmental laws have been used to nearly completely shut down the domestic oil industry. Year after year, decade after decade, more and more areas have been put off-limits by federal judges and bureaucrats in a wide variety of government agencies. The result is that we’ve become more and more dependent on foreign countries, many of whom cannot be characterized as our friends, for the oil we need to run our businesses, our transportation infrastructure, to manufacture a vast array of products, and to heat and cool our homes, hospitals, and even government buildings. We have also lost several million jobs, directly and indirectly, as a result of what amounts to an attack on America from within.

Coming from Louisiana, Representative Landry is intimately familiar with the economic damage caused by the jobs killed by Democrat shutdowns of our ability to drill for the untapped oil that we know exists, both onshore and off . After the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, the illegal shutdown of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico by Obama and his Interior Department greenie puppet, Ken Salazar, directly killed off some 162,000 jobs, thousands of them in Landry’s district. In addition, the seven-year ban on drilling and a slowdown of the permitting process, euphemistically called a “moratorium,” resulted in the loss of billions of investment dollars. Eleven drilling rigs left the Gulf for Brazil, Egypt or Angola, generating more than an estimated $21 billion in investments in those countries. Even though a federal judge declared the shutdown illegal, Obama and Salazar immediately imposed another one, causing the government to be cited with contempt of court. Really ugly stuff.

The Natural Resources Committee, under the leadership of Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA), is about to pass H.R. 6082, The Congressional Replacement of President Obama’s Energy-Restricting and Job-Limiting Offshore Drilling Plan. The bill is intended, “To officially replace, within the 60-day Congressional review period under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, President Obama’s Proposed Final Outer Continental Shelf Oil & Gas Leasing Program (2012–2017) with a congressional plan that will conduct additional oil and natural gas lease sales to promote offshore energy development, job creation, and increased domestic energy production to ensure a more secure energy future in the United States, and for other purposes.” It is likely that this will be passed by the House, and then, as with every other jobs-creation bill passed by the Republican-led House, it will be killed by Harry Reid (D-NV) and his Marxist, neo-fascist, and RINO lackeys in the Senate.

It has been authoritatively estimated that 668,000+ oil industry jobs would be created by 2015 by opening access to areas currently closed to development, and allow a return to historical levels of activity in the Gulf, offshore on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, in onshore areas, and by allowing the Keystone XL and other U.S./Canadian pipelines to be constructed. By 2020, the number is expected to be around 1.1 million jobs. BTW, these are not typical Democrat minimum chump-change jobs, but good paying ones that will stimulate creation of other hundreds of thousands of other jobs like housing construction, grocery stores, clothing stores, cleaners, auto dealerships, mechanics, restaurants, etc., etc. And since it is estimated that we have at least 2.3 trillion barrels in our known domestic reserves, enough to last 300 years at today’s consumption levels, we would not need to buy one drop from the likes of the Islamic radicals of Saudi Arabia and Iran, or Marxist dictators like Hugo Chavez, or corrupt, leftist kleptocracies like Mexico and Russia.

This last point is especially significant since it appears virtually certain that Obama will start a war with Syria and/or Iran before the November election, in a desperate attempt to get the support he currently doesn’t have to get re-elected.

So folks, if you have a congressman like Jeff Landry, a principled conservative with the best interests of We, the People and our need for jobs and national security, foremost in his daily approach to his duties in Washington, do any- and everything you can to see that he or she gets re-elected.