Not long ago, Bill Kerrigan toured Eagle Ford Shale, a string of oil and natural gas fields south of San Antonio, Texas, that stretches across 24 counties and has yielded just shy of five million barrels of oil between January and July of this year. In that time, Eagle Ford has brought tens of thousands of workers to south Texas and turned tiny desert communities into boomtowns.
“That’s one thing about oil,” say Kerrigan, who heads Arkose Energy, an oil exploration firm based in Nashville, It’s good at creating jobs, and it does it quickly. And I don’t know of a minimum-paying job in the oil industry.”
Looking at the activity at Eagle Ford Shale, Kerrigan remembers thinking, “I wish someone from Washington would come see this.”
As governor of Texas, Rick Perry has seen it. In the economic plan his presidential campaign released last month, Perry says domestic oil and natural gas production has the potential to supply the United States with close to 1.5 million new jobs. In a new TV ad, Perry has now revised that figure to 2.5 million jobs. And rather than bring someone from Washington to see it, Perry wants the American people to send him to the White House.
As president, Perry vows he would open up federal lands to exploration and streamline the process to get permits that can require millions of dollars and years of litigation before drilling starts.
“This can be done without being mired in Washington gridlock, because a president can roll back intrusive regulations, create energy jobs, and make our nation more secure,” the plan reads. Under the heading “Jobs” in his plan, energy is the only source of job he mentions.
Energy policy is a key component of the rest of the Republican job-creation plans, each in their own manner.
In her “Jobs Right Now” program, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann promises to “legalize American energy production and America’s natural resources.”
But for Bachmann, Mitt Romney, Herman Cain, Jon Hunstman and Rick Santorum, increased energy production is part of a package of regulatory reforms and reduced corporate tax rates designed to grow the economy.
With the exception of Perry’s, the job plans the Republican campaigns have released over the past two months are free of specifics about jobs.
This is the Republican way ever since Ronald Reagan; supply-side economics says government can dictate only conditions, not outcomes. This year, especially, the President’s prospective rivals are steering clear of anything that smacks of Obama-like stimulus or targeted aid.
“Smart policies that promote economic growth are the only way to create the jobs we need,” Ryan Williams, a Romney spokesperson, told CNBC.com. “We’ve had three years of policies designed to “create jobs now” and we have seen the results.”
There is a risk that the public mood, encouraged by President Obama‘s barnstorming bus tours to promote his jobs bill and the growing popularity of the Occupy movement, will be looking for more concrete action.
The White House’s frankly activist bill pushes for billions of dollars in spending on highways and schools with hopes of putting construction workers, among the hardest hit in the recession, back to work, while extending cuts in payroll taxes.
Economists, meanwhile, have been cheering the bill’s support for the Build Act, a bipartisan proposal for a government-owned, independently-run bank that will use public funds to seed private investment in infrastructure.
Meanwhile, the GOP candidates’ policies do extend a helping hand in some ways:
Santorum, from the Pittsburgh area, focuses his tax relief on ailing manufacturing by zeroing out taxes on business reinvestment.
Romney pitches federal reimbursement for companies that retrain workers.
Herman Cain, who has stayed on message by making 9-9-9 his jobs plan, too (“Nine-nine-nine means jobs, jobs, jobs,” he chanted in a speech in Detroit late last month.) wants to create “Opportunity Zones,” modeled after the Reagan-era Empowerment Zones to help inner cities.
These add-ons, and the fact that the Obama jobs bill hit a buzz saw on Capitol Hill, won’t stop Democrats from claiming that their bill went all-out for Americans who are desperate for work now (despite comments from economists and some of their own party who said the stimulus portion of the overall $447 billion package was too little to have an impact).
Republicans counter that Democratic interference in the economy — from Obamacare to the Dodd-Frank law — is precisely what has hampered a faster recovery.
Bachmann says repealing the 2010 health care act (which all the GOP candidates advocate) would “reduce uncertainty” among employers who would otherwise be hiring.
Williams, the Romney spokesman, told CNBC.com, “Our plan as a whole is designed to give businesses the confidence and certainty they need to start investing again right away.” In speeches, Romney has said his measures will produce 11.5 million jobs in his first term.
Which makes it all the more curious that Perry touts his 2.5 million jobs in a boom-and-bust business as a game changer. His math has already been questioned, and he’s been criticized as a pawn of the oil industry.
It’s also worth pointing out, with all due respect to Bill Kerrigan, that the website Careercast.com recently named the dirty and often dangerous profession of oil-field roustabout the worst job of 2011.
Copyright 2011 CNBC.com.
Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/story/2011-11-12/rick-perry-jobs-energy/51153894/1
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We are in so much truoble….can this country withstand this President and his administration until Nov 2012??? He needs to be stopped he is destroying this country !!!!!!
Posted by Rasakiibrahim | February 10, 2012, 2:37 am