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Obama’s ‘Quadrennial Energy Review’: Old Vinegar in New Bottles (remember Jimmy Carter and FDR)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- January 10, 2014

“The only good national energy strategy is one premised on private property rights, voluntary exchange, and the rule of law. Not a central, government plan, but a decentralized we-the-people ‘plan’.”

Energy studies, energy plans. They are not new. We saw them in 1938, 1977, yesterday—and in years between.

Now, the smartest-guys-in-the-government-room  will, once again, pontificate and propose more regulation and intervention on top of the tens of thousands of pages of directives that have built up in the last 40+ years. (The modern era of U.S. energy regulation began with Nixon’s wage-and-price-control order of August 1971.)

Usually, such studies come out with recommendations, which then turn into legislative proposals for a Congressional debate and a vote before reaching the President’s desk. But with President Obama legislating via Executive Order, expect the worst.