Economic Strength Through Energy Independence

March 12, 2015

by Capt. James McCormick, USA (ret.), Vets4Energy Program Director

With each successive month, we see job growth in the American economy that is not nearly as robust as we know it could be. More and more Americans continue to drop out of the labor force, frustrated by months and months of looking for a job with no success.

On top of this, our American veterans returning from years of conflict in the Middle East are still struggling to find work. The unemployment rate for post-9/11 veterans in late 2014 was a staggering 7.2%, and it was on the rise. That’s nearly two points higher than the regular unemployment rate today.

American veterans want to work, and we owe them much more for the sacrifices they made for our nation than directions to the unemployment line.

What’s the one area that we know for sure that can create new, good-paying jobs for America’s veterans? The energy sector.

Over the past few years, we’ve seen the United States surge to the status of a global energy superpower. We’ve overtaken many nations in oil production that we used to rely on for energy. The increasing use of the safe and time-tested technology of hydraulic fracturing has given us access to oil and natural gas that was previously unreachable by any other method.

Along with this explosion in energy productivity, we’ve also seen a surge in employment. American energy development created 600,000 new jobs between 2009 and 2011, and the sector now supports 9.8 million jobs across the American economy.

But we could be doing so much more.

Experts predict that almost 700,000 new jobs could be created by 2030 if we permitted access to stores of American energy that are currently off limits. Just think how many of those jobs could go to the qualified people who so bravely served our country overseas.

What’s more, expanding American sources of energy helps further the same goals that these veterans signed up for in the first place when they enlisted in the American military. They wanted to make sure that the American homeland was safe and secure.

One clear and easy way to bolster our national security interests is to make our national less dependent on foreign sources of energy. This means we aren’t beholden to countries that don’t share our national interests, and that might very well want to do us harm. This takes money right out of the pockets of tin pot dictators and terrorist organizations, and decreases their power and influence in the world.

It’s clear and simple: expanding American energy production makes our economy and our nation stronger and safer, both here and home and abroad.

But, sadly, there are political interests standing in the way of America achieving its full potential as an energy super power. They’re obstructing the construction of the job-creating Keystone XL pipeline. They’re agitating for the Environmental Protection Agency to implement draconian rules and regulations on the American coal industry that threaten to put them out of business, and put more Americans in the unemployment line.

In doing so, they threaten to make our country weaker. They threaten to make us less prepared to defend ourselves from foreign threats if we don’t have the energy resources we need to power our modern American military.

The reality is that we need all sources of American energy — oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear, wind, solar, hydroelectric power. We need it all. We need a true all-of-the-above approach to energy production that keeps our nation strong and secure.

We owe this to the brave men and women who served our country so valiantly in the American military. We owe them more than an unemployment check. We owe them a strong economy, a safe nation, and the good-paying jobs that can come when we embrace a true all-of-the-above solution to American energy — and the jobs for veterans and all Americans that will come with it.