Nevada Republicans take issue with Obama’s proposals

By Karoun Demirjian

Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012 | 10:05 p.m.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama said “the state of our union is getting stronger” Tuesday night, but what was stronger still was the president’s new tone.

“I will work with anyone in this chamber to build on this momentum. But I intend to fight obstruction with action,” he informed members of Congress gathered in the Capitol, “and I will oppose any effort to return to the very same policies that brought on this economic crisis in the first place.”

It’s the president’s constitutional duty to deliver an annual address to Congress about the condition of the country. But this speech also served as a platform for the president to lay out an action plan of the initiatives he plans to pursue with — but more likely despite — Congress.

It’s likely not a coincidence that the official list included many items that will play well in swing states — including Nevada.

The president’s speech was loosely based on four pillars: American manufacturing, American energy, American jobs, and American values. It’s the second of those pillars, energy, that he’ll be focusing on later this week when he comes to Nevada — and while he didn’t mention the Silver State during his speech, what he said in the State of the Union is a preview of what we’ll likely hear Thursday morning. (Hoover Dam, incidentally, did get a shout-out.)

“Nowhere is the promise of innovation greater than in American-made energy,” Obama said, announcing that effective immediately, he was going to open up 75 percent of the United States’ potential offshore oil and gas resources, and open up public land to renewable energy development — enough to power 3 million homes.

More than two-thirds of Nevada is public land, and the state has become a hotbed for solar and geothermal development recently, especially under government incentive programs that expired earlier this year.

Nevada is also home to a fleet of liquefied natural gas-powered transport trucks that Obama will be featuring in his Thursday morning stop at a UPS facility in Las Vegas. Natural gas, a cleaner-burning fuel, is the country’s largest available nonrenewable domestic energy resource; it’s also popular with Republicans and Democrats.

“The development of natural gas will create jobs and power trucks and factories that are cleaner and cheaper, proving that we don’t have to choose between our environment and our economy,” Obama said Tuesday night, using the example of natural gas to make an argument for investing in clean energy.

“It was public research dollars, over the course of 30 years, that helped develop the technologies to extract all this natural gas out of shale rock — reminding us that government support is critical in helping businesses get new energy ideas off the ground. What’s true for natural gas is true for clean energy,” he said. “We have subsidized oil companies for a century. That’s long enough. It’s time to end the taxpayer giveaways to an industry that’s rarely been more profitable, and double-down on a clean energy industry that’s never been more promising. Pass clean energy tax credits and create these jobs.”

Nevada’s Republicans were not impressed with his clarion call.

“We’ve always talked about having an all-of-the-above energy policy, and I’m glad to see that the president agrees that that’s where we need to go,” said Rep. Joe Heck of Nevada’s 3rd District, who applauded Obama’s call for more green energy projects Tuesday night but didn’t agree with the rest of his plan. “The problem is we can’t be in the business of picking winners and losers ... If he’s such a big supporter of ensuring that we’re not reliant on those who wish to do us harm, well then why aren’t we doing the Keystone pipeline?”

The proposed Keystone XL pipeline would run from Canada to the Gulf Coast over the breadbasket’s largest aquifer; it crosses nowhere near Nevada but is estimated to create about 20,000 jobs.

“There wasn’t one word mentioned of clean coal ... He talked about what he’s done with oil but then says it’s 2 percent (of the world’s deposits) and dismisses it,” said Rep. Mark Amodei of Nevada’s 2nd District. “I’m just sitting there listening to that going, ‘everything’s on the table, but he mentioned only renewable, green stuff.’ ... The speech was a wholesale assault on the oil industry.”

Rep. Shelley Berkley and Sen. Dean Heller turned down requests for interviews, and Sen. Harry Reid did not stop for a question in the hallway following the president’s speech.

While energy is what Obama will bring on the road to Nevada, it’s not the only proposal he had to address the Silver State’s particular woes.

He announced Tuesday night that he’d be delivering a new housing plan to Congress soon “that gives every responsible homeowner the chance to save about $3,000 a year on their mortgage ... no more red tape, no more runaround from the banks.”

He also dropped an education stunner, proposing “that every state, every state, require students stay in high school until they graduate or turn 18” as a way of improving educational performance.

There were more murmurs than there was applause in response to that one.

Obama also appeared to stretch an olive branch to disgruntled Hispanics by calling for a renewed focus on comprehensive immigration reform and promising to sign the DREAM Act — though he noticeably didn’t mention it by name.

And he pledged to pursue a new day in the tax code: “If you make more than $1 million a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes,” the president said.

All of these issues have the potential to manifest themselves as legislation in the next year: Congress has to pass a tax bill by the close of 2012, the component parts of comprehensive immigration reform have been drafted for years, and soon, Obama will deliver that housing bill to Congress and we’ll get to see the details.

But pragmatically speaking, it’s unlikely a Congress so divided will move forward on anything that isn’t absolutely necessary — which is why this was a campaign message, Republicans argued, not destined to have any immediate effect.

“Certainly this is a campaign speech. It’s the same things that we’ve heard before, just repackaged,” Heck said. “In Southern Nevada, you can’t talk about the economy, jobs and housing as three separate things. It’s all one for us.”

Amodei thought the speech was so guided by politics that the president missed the country’s chief policy concern entirely.

“I would have liked to have heard some acknowledgement, at least as an issue, that there is a debt and a deficit, and I didn’t hear that,” Amodei said. “Take half the money from the war and pay that down? That’s not a proposal. I mean, it’s like OK, come on, seriously. Come on. What war?”

But Nevada’s top Democrat pointed a warning finger back in the Republicans’ direction Tuesday night as he defended and praised the president’s speech in a statement.

“President Obama offered common-sense solutions that will create jobs and put our country on a path to economic fairness,” he said. “To turn these job-creating proposals into reality, we need Republicans to work with us, and refrain from turning straightforward issues into all-or-nothing battles. I am optimistic that this year, Republicans will turn away from the Tea Party, and listen to the American people.”

The offices of Berkley and Heller, who are vying against each other for the Senate in 2012, also released statements about the president’s speech following its conclusion Tuesday night, reprinted here in their entirety.

“What we heard tonight is the desperate need for our nation to focus on the top priority for Nevada families: job creation. That starts by prioritizing Nevada’s middle-class over Wall Street millionaires and Big Oil executives,” Berkley said in her written statement. “We can no longer afford Dean Heller’s pro-Wall Street agenda that ships American jobs overseas. I urge Heller and Washington Republicans to stop blocking progress on the creation of good-paying jobs that stay right here in Nevada.”

“As Nevada and our nation continue to struggle with high unemployment, finding common ground to move our nation forward is more critical today than ever. Today our nation has no roadmap to bolster economic growth or to rein in our nation’s massive debt that will impact generations to come. It is past time for a genuine effort to work in a bipartisan manner to fix our economy,” Heller said in his written statement. “I’m hopeful that with the right policies in place, we can bolster economic growth and fix the housing crisis not only in Nevada, but across the country. There are a number of items that Washington could act upon immediately to move our nation forward. By stopping the flow of burdensome regulations, reducing the federal debt, and reforming the tax code, the president and Congress can help set the stage for long-term economic growth.”