Our country is blessed with many options for producing energy. All forms of energy production should be allowed, and none should be given special benefits.

Energy subsidies—whether for oil, wind, electric, or otherwise—make no sense. Subsidizing inefficient energy production in the hope that it will become efficient in the future is wasteful and ineffective.

It requires higher taxes, locks in old technologies, and unfairly punishes entrepreneurs and inventors who do not have friends in government.

Energy sources that truly meet the demands of consumers will thrive in the marketplace over time and do not need government handouts to be viable.

Washington’s bureaucratic regulations, corporate subsidies, and excessive taxation have made it virtually impossible for the market to produce new forms of cheap and clean energy.

Companies have become more concerned with hiring lobbyists than they have with hiring scientists and engineers.

We should be talking about energy freedom. Like all other sectors of the economy, allowing businesses and ideas to compete on the free market will not only produce the most efficient forms of energy, but will also pass along the savings to the consumer.

By subsidizing certain new energies like solar and wind we distort the marketplace and make it impossible for companies to know what is really the most efficient solution. Subsidies take away the incentives for business to innovate and instead give them an incentive to lobby Washington.

Subsidies guarantee that business with the most political clout and not the best product will succeed.

Much of the blame for our high energy prices can be placed on bad government policies that have resulted in high prices, high taxes, and unnecessary federal intervention in the energy sector.

I will vote to cut taxes and lift regulations on every company in America, including those that are developing new sources of energy. But this does not mean that I want to take taxpayer money to subsidize them. Any energy source that really meets the needs of the American consumer would not need the government to subsidize it.

So long as we leave our energy policy to the special interests in Washington we will continue to have expensive and dirty energy sources.

Our energy crisis today stems from too much government intervention and the solution is to allow real competition in the energy industry, not political favoritism.