Oklahoma energy secretary: U.S. needs honest discussion about energy

Contrary to what Americans have been told by many political leaders, the United States has an abundance of energy resources. We just need to better produce, use and leverage those resources.

In his State of the Union address, Obama finally acknowledged the important role traditional fossil fuels play in our nation's economic and energy security future, especially discoveries of massive new domestic oil and natural gas supplies. Unfortunately, the rest of the president's message was misleading at best.

The president's claim that the credit for these new supplies goes to federal oil and natural gas research and development efforts omits the far more important roles of private-sector capitalism, innovation, perseverance, vision and hard work, along with strategic tax incentives. While the federal government has historically had an R&D program, the president failed to mention that his administration has continually sought to eliminate the R&D he now applauds. His administration is essentially rewriting history, like a Monday morning quarterback claiming to have thrown the winning touchdown.

To be sure, government-sponsored research has a role in ensuring that our resources are responsibly developed, but this is not what the president proposes. Directly contradicting the advice of his most elite scientific advisers, Obama's budget eliminates the public-private partnership approach in favor of a bureaucratic, government-directed program between the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Geological Survey. There couldn't be a worse time to grow the DOE bureaucracy, especially when all motives point toward a vast expansion of federal regulatory jurisdiction.