President Obama announced last week that he wants to spend another $2 Billion of the US Taxpayer's money for research into battery technology and clean fuel technologies. Why?
Within his own cabinet sits the Secretary of Energy, a senior government official in charge an agency with 16,000 direct employees and an additional 90,000+ employees whose stated mission is "to ensure America's security and prosperity by addressing its energy, environmental and nuclear challenges through transformative science and technology solutions." The budget for the DOE was $15 Billion in 1980. The budget today is $30.6 Billion.
The Department of Energy was created by Congress at the urging of former President Jimmy Carter after the oil crunch of 1973. The following are excerpts from his remarks on March 1, 1977, 36 years ago this month:
"Today we sent to the Congress a proposal for the creation of a new and comprehensive Department of Energy. This is long overdue. We now have more than 50 different Federal agencies who have divided among themselves the responsibilities for the evolution and the carrying out of an energy policy for our country.
This Department will make it possible for us to evolve very quickly a comprehensive energy policy which we've missed. It will give us an opportunity to regulate the production and distribution of energy along with the pricing concepts clearly and, I believe, cohesively.
It will also permit us to channel research and development funds in a way that would be consistent with the long-range needs of our country. It will let us insure to a maximum degree that the data that we obtain concerning energy reserves are accurate and, also, that the American people might trust the information provided to them about how much energy we have available in different forms. And it will greatly simplify the bureaucracy."
Our Department of Energy has several Energy Innovation Hubs, "integrated research centers that combine basic and applied research with engineering to accelerate scientific discovery in critical energy issue areas." If we already have these hubs, why do we need to spend $2 Billion more to develop the technologies that President Obama wants? Why don't we have them now? Has anyone been holding the agency and its former heads accountable for the money they've been spending?
I'm very concerned about the future energy needs of the USA and the planet, and that we're making meaningful progress toward creating a sustainable future. We need to have an adult conversation about exactly what the DoE is doing to fulfill its mission to help ensure America's security and prosperity. Given the hundreds of billions of US taxpayer dollars that have already spent, and that fact that no new technologies have been developed to ensure our energy independence, what is our path forward on energy? Is it spending more money on programs that haven't produced any results, or is it recognizing that the path we've chosen simply isn't working and we need to look for another path altogether.
To quote former US Senator Everett Dirkson, "A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money." Let's make sure those billions are being spent in a responsible and productive manner.
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