As the energy crisis continues, so does the debate about off shore drilling. From Charles Krauthammer?s editorial yesterday,
??drilling requires no government program, no newly created bureaucracy, no pie-in-the-sky technologies that no one has yet invented. It requires only one thing, only one act. Lift the moratorium. Private industry will do the rest. And far from draining the treasury, it will replenish it with direct taxes, and with the indirect taxes from the thousands of non-subsidized new jobs created.?
Any lift on a drilling moratorium would allow each state to decide how and where and even if to drill. In the last days of the North Carolina General Assembly, forty five representatives sponsored House Resolution 2806 which would allow North Carolina to determine whether offshore exploration and drilling should be allowed off our coast. Unfortunately the bill was sent to the House Rules Committee and did not get a hearing or a vote.
Those representatives sponsoring the resolution: Stam (R-Wake), McGee (R-Forsyth), Folwell (R-Forsyth), Justice (R-Pender) (Primary Sponsors); Avila (R-Wake), Barnhart (R-Cabarrus), Blackwood (R-Union), Blust (R-Guilford), Boylan (R-Moore), Brubaker (R-Randolph), Clary (R-Cleveland), Cleveland (R-Onslow), Current (R-Gaston), Daughtridge (R-Nash), Daughtry (R-Johnston), Dockham (R-Davidson), Dollar (R-Wake), Frye (R-Mitchell), Furr (R-Stanley), Gillespie (R-McDowell), Gulley (R-Mecklenberg), Hilton (R-Catawba), Holloway (R-Stokes), Holmes (R-Yadkin), Hurley (R-Randolph), Justus (R-Henderson), Killian (R-Mecklenberg), Kiser (R-Lincoln), Langdon ((R-Johnston), Lewis (R-Harnett), McElraft (R-Carteret), Moore (R-Cleveland), Neumann (R-Gaston), Pate(R-Wayne), Ray (R-Iredell), Samuelson (R-Mecklenberg), Setzer (R-Catawba), Starnes (R-Caldwell), Steen (R-Rowan), Thomas (R-Buncombe), Tillis (R-Mecklenberg), Walend (R-Transylvania), Walker(R-Wilkes), West (R-Cherokee), and Wiley (R-Guilford).
