Bipartisan Energy Policy: The Solution or the Problem?

Over the last six years, President Obama has applauded the boom in U.S. oil and natural gas output while simultaneously launching a barrage of costly mandates and subsidies meant to end the fossil fuel era. Now the president faces a Republican Congress for his final years in office.

Will the 114th Congress bring meaningful compromise on energy reform? Peter Grossman, Butler University economics professor and author of U.S. Energy Policy and the Pursuit of Failure, contends that bipartisan compromise is possible and has led to policy change in the past. However, that change has almost always been bad for the country.

Bipartisanship, Professor Grossman notes, has given us ill-conceived and wasteful programs for synthetic fuels, breeder reactors, “super cars,” windmills, and ethanol. Professor Grossman believes that the problem runs much deeper than the current president or balance of parties in Congress. He argues U.S. energy policy has been premised on false concepts of markets, government, technology, and history for the past forty years.

On Friday, December 5th at 3:00 pm, Hudson Institute hosted a debate on the feasibility of bipartisan energy policy in the 114th Congress and the likely paths forward. Hudson Institute Visiting Fellow Lee Lane moderated a panel with Professor Grossman featuring Hudson Institute Distinguished Fellow Christopher DeMuth and NERA Economic Consulting Senior Vice President W. David Montgomery.