Reason Writers Around Town: Shikha Dalmia on Rick Perry Undercutting His Own Energy Plan
The biggest problem with the energy plan that Rick Perry released last week, notes Reason Foundation Senior Analyst Shikha Dalmia in her latest column at The Daily, is Rick Perry himself.
Like a desperate used-car salesman, he is making such outlandish claims for it that his customers might walk out before taking a good look. That, however, would be a pity, because the plan is actually better than any proposed by any president in recent memory.
It offers a pretty radical blueprint for liberalizing the energy sector by getting rid of fuel subsidies for both renewables and non-renewables. But instead of pitching it as an energy reform plan, he is pitching it as a jobs plan, much like President Obama did with his green jobs program. This is foolish because the main point of energy liberalization is not to create jobs. "It's to make cheap and reliable energy available to individuals and businesses," Dalmia notes.
Read the whole thing here.