By Jessica Goad | Climate Progress
Yesterday morning, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) offered his fiscal year 2014 budget, which the Wall Street Journal called “almost identical” to the Romney-Ryan presidential platform last year. In addition to cutting taxes for the rich and preserving tax breaks for Big Oil, the budget offers an extreme and flawed view of public lands and energy development.
For example, in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal last night, Ryan offered a confused vision of government programs designed to purchase lands from willing sellers:
America has the world’s largest natural gas, oil and coal reserves—enough natural gas to meet the country’s needs for 90 years. Yet the administration is buying up land to prevent further development. Our budget opens these lands to development, so families will have affordable energy.