By George Allen
The Washington Examiner
April 26, 2011

In answering a college student’s question about high gas prices last week at Northern Virginia Community College, President Obama told Americans he believes the only real way to reduce our energy costs is to spend money on research and development of clean-energy technology.

Well guess what, Mr. President, America is blessed with the most plentiful energy resources in the world – right here under our land and water. If we are serious about saving family’s money and reducing dependence of foreign oil, what we ought unleash and utilize our resources cleanly and creatively for American jobs, quality of life, balance of trade and national security.

Sadly, the president and his liberal allies in Washington seem more concerned about tilting at intermittent, expensive windmills and throwing up bureaucratic roadblocks to using our American resources than the crippling impact of high energy costs on Virginians and Americans already struggling to keep afloat in a slow economy. These counterproductive policies are taking America down a path that is deeply flawed, unrealistic, harmful, and downright dangerous.

By almost every measurable indicator, the Obama Administration has launched a full-scale assault on conventional fuels – whether it is the EPA advancing the “train wreck” of draconian regulations affecting all facets of the energy that powers our lives and livelihoods, the Interior Department’s stalling effort to cut off access to Gulf of Mexico oil by withholding drilling permits, the substantial increase in bureaucratic red tape that has diminished productive activity, or the president’s termination of Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository.

Such actions have led companies to question building of new coal and nuclear plants. Meanwhile, wind and solar power technologies remain costly and years away – if ever – from widespread use, despite the tens of billions the U.S. Department of Energy has spent on renewable energy technologies since 1978, when Jimmy Carter was in the White House. All of which foreshadows a future of higher energy costs for American families and businesses, and increased – not decreased – dependency on foreign oil.

Click here to continue reading.