WASHINGTON — American Energy Alliance President Thomas Pyle has issued the following statement on the White House budget proposal:
“President Trump’s budget, dubbed The New Foundation for American Greatness, has many of the elements required to live up to that ambitious billing. At a fundamental level, this budget reconsiders and aims to restore the appropriate relationship between the government and the American taxpayers. By taking a taxpayer-first approach, the Trump administration signals to the American people that money will no longer be wasted in Washington on the pet projects of bureaucrats and cronies.
The budget requests $28 billion for the Department of Energy—a welcomed reduction of 5.6 percent from 2017’s annualized CR level. This figure ensures the Department’s core functions remain funded while trimming superfluous and uneconomical programs. For example, over the course of the next 10 years, the budget purports to halve the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), which will save $16.5 billion. The SPR is a relic from an era of undue supply concern; we now know, of course, that the United States sits atop billions of barrels of oil waiting to be tapped. One geographic area in particular that is flush with natural petroleum reserves—around the order of 10 billion barrels—is the Alaskan arctic region. Encouragingly, this budget anticipates oil and gas leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge starting in 2022, which will not only shore up domestic supply, but also fill government coffers with leasing revenue.
Even more promising than the DOE reductions, the 2018 budget request for the Environmental Protection Agency is just $5.7 billion—a whopping 31 percent reduction from the 2017 annualized CR level. The lower budget will prompt EPA to focus its attention on the issues of highest national priority, while releasing power for many regional initiatives back to states and municipalities.
President Trump’s campaign built much of its support by promising to shake things up in the nation’s capital. This budget does just that. For the first time in recent memory, the executive branch is adopting the perspective of the American taxpayers. With that perspective comes a much-needed shrinking of the Washington spending machine.”
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