Republican Whip Roy Blunt

Whether House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) used any of her five-week vacation to read-up on the basics of where natural gas comes from (fossils), what the price of gasoline is (not $2.56), or if it’s possible to boost one’s book sales on Amazon by using the “refresh” button – one thing we’re confident she studied is the public opinion polls declaring that seven in 10 Americans oppose her caucus’s position on accessing our abundant deep-ocean energy resources.

How do we know for sure? Well, Democratic leaders have abruptly decided to bring up what they’re sheepishly touting as a “drilling” bill next week, even as the speaker continues to deride as “a hoax” any suggestion that increasing our access to homegrown American energy will lower the price Americans are forced to pay for it.

The Christian Science Monitor captures the full measure of her cognitive dissonance here:

Indeed, the reporting on this package has been so focused on the possibility of Democrats finally allowing an up-or-down vote (gasp!) on expanding access to American-made energy that even some of the speaker’s most loyal apparatchiks are starting to wag their fingers. This admonishment came from Ms. Anna Auriolio of a group named “Environment America”:

But here’s the thing: In order to believe there’s even been a slight thaw in the speaker’s long-held antipathy for bringing new American energy supplies online, one would have to believe the bill she intends to bring forth next week actually seeks to produce a meaningful amount of new energy. But it doesn’t. Ms. Auriolio can sleep easy; it’s everyone else who needs to be worried.

Beyond that, reports indicate the bill is likely to include billions in new taxes on energy producers – big and small – a devastating unfunded mandate specifically designed to increase the cost of electricity, and the resurrection of the Democratic leadership’s thrice-discarded “Use It or Lose It” canard, a plan and a premise that’s been discredited more times than Donald Trump’s barber.

Of course, consistent with how they’ve managed these things in the past, Democrats haven’t quite gotten around to applying pen to paper in crafting this putative energy bill yet. But word around town is that their objective is to manufacture and sell what amounts to an illusion: a bill, at first blush, that appears to take an unprecedented step toward unlocking meaningful supplies of new American energy.

The only problem? It appears Democrats forgot how to share. The Hill picks it up there:

But the conspicuous absence of any royalty-sharing language is far from accidental. You see, by working hard to eliminate any incentive for coastal states to team up with the federal government to break our dependence on foreign oil, Democrats are attempting to ensure that no such development would ever take place.

Keep in mind that Gulf Coast states already share in federal offshore revenues, and interior states across the country already receive an annual check for their share of federal onshore royalties.  By creating two separate classes of coastal states – one with a legitimate claim to a portion of offshore revenues; the other, apparently, without – Democrats are ensuring that regional animosity (not access to new energy) will be the product of their efforts.

Of course, maybe all this talk about royalty sharing is putting the cart before the horse. After all: the only way you get any royalties to share is if you find some actual energy to produce.  Incidentally, an editorial in this morning’s Wall Street Journal puts the potential revenue take from legitimate offshore energy development at $2.6 trillion. That’s a two, followed by a six, followed by 11 zeros.

But as this analysis from the Institute for Energy Research shows, Speaker Pelosi’s energy bill takes affirmative steps to permanently lock away some of the most promising fields we got:

But while the bill’s so-called “drilling” section may be the most illusory item in play, it’s far from the worst. That dubious honor would go to the multi-billion-dollar rate-hike that Americans who use electricity to heat and cool their homes can expect if this bill earns passage. Or maybe it’s the multi-billion-dollar tax hike on American energy producers – which estimates suggest could cost us 637,000 American jobs. Or maybe, at the end of the day, it’s still the thoroughly discredited “Use It or Lose It” section – which attempts, with Orwellian flare, to construct an alternate reality on energy with the purpose of denying access to those who own it:

Quite a compromise, huh? Higher taxes, unfunded mandates, permanent bans on exploring for new American energy. And that’s no hoax.