1.  The Obama administration claims that this sale is a component of the President’s desire to “promote safe and responsible domestic oil and gas production as a part of a comprehensive energy strategy.”

FACT:  President Obama imposed a job-killing moratorium on offshore energy development in the Gulf of Mexico that cost America at least 12,000 jobs and more than $2 billion over the course of the first six months of the moratorium.  The only reason the Administration is holding a new lease sale for the Central Gulf of Mexico is because the sale is required as a part of the Congressionally-sanctioned 2007-2012 Five Year Plan, according to the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act of 1978 (OCSLA).  If the administration did not hold this sale before June 30, 2011, it would not be fulfilling the intent of the law.

2.  The Obama administration claims that this lease sale will open up new offshore lands for energy development.

FACT:  Today’s announced lease sale does not open any lands for exploration that were not already scheduled two years before President Obama took office.  The 2007-2012 Five Year OCS Lease Plan included 16 sales in 6 offshore areas.  Of these 16 sales, the Obama administration cancelled or delayed a number of them.  Of the 2 that remain in the Central Gulf, the administration has scheduled them for simultaneous sale, which means that only one sale will actually occur.  The Obama administration also cancelled a lease sale for areas off the coast of Virginia, and permanently removed 5 sales off the coast of Alaska.  In 2010, the Obama administration did not hold a single lease sale, the first time this has happened in many years.

3.  The Obama administration claims that this sale is a part of its strategy to “increase responsible domestic production and reduce dependence on foreign oil.”

FACT:  Even once the remaining 2007-2012 sales are complete, the administration has shown little interest in reducing America’s oil imports.  The reductions in imports that have occurred in recent years owe more to the sluggish economy and reduced demand from American consumers than administration energy policy.  Moreover, in recent weeks, the president single-handedly denied the Keystone XL pipeline permit, which would have made up to 830,000 barrels of North American oil available daily to U.S. markets.

4.  The Obama administration claims that the terms of this sale will “ensure that taxpayers receive a fair market value for offshore resources.”

FACT: U.S. taxpayers received 258 times less revenue from offshore lease sales last year than they did under the last year of the Bush administration. Revenue from offshore lease sales has plummeted from nearly $9.5 billion in FY2008 to paltry $36.7 million in FY2011.

5.  The Obama administration claims that it is developing a new Five Year Plan for 2012-2017 that will “make more than 75 percent of undiscovered technically recoverable oil and gas estimated on the OCS available for development.”

FACT:  The United States currently has leased a mere 2.2% of available lands on the Outer Continental Shelf.  The amount of un-leased lands that are not currently leased for energy development is equal to ten times the acreage of the entire State of Texas.  Currently, limits on offshore production keep annual production to only 588 million barrels of oil — or less than 1/10th of our annual demand — even though the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement estimates that the U.S. has about 86 billion barrels of undiscovered oil in the Outer Continental Shelf.  Nevertheless, the Obama administration continues to block exploration of the vast majority of America’s offshore resources.

Furthermore, the current Five Year Plan expires on June 30, 2012.  The law mandates that the administration to present to Congress a new Five Year Plan, which requires a 60-day review period before final authorization.  This means that the Obama administration must present the new Five Year Plan to Congress before May 1, 2012.  If the administration does not produce a plan before then, the United States runs the risk of having no legal framework to develop the Outer Continental Shelf for the first time since the passage of OCSLA in 1978.

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For Immediate Release
January 24, 2012

“If the state of the union is actually stronger, it comes despite the policies of President Obama and not because of them.” — IER President Thomas Pyle

WASHINGTON D.C. — Tonight, President Barack Obama addressed a joint session of Congress on the State of the Union. In his speech, President Obama called for greater domestic energy exploration, higher taxes on energy production, and more taxpayer subsidies for renewable energy. IER President Thomas Pyle released the following statement in response to the President’s speech:

“If the state of the union is actually stronger, it comes despite the policies of President Obama and not because of them. Tonight, the president claimed credit for ‘opening millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration,’ and he called for his administration to open ‘more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil and gas resources.’  He also claimed credit for the fact that oil imports are down, even though the drop owes more to the ongoing hardships experienced by millions of Americans who cannot find jobs or afford to drive in the Obama economy.

“Job creators and American consumers should welcome the president’s latest energy promises with suspicion.  Indeed, we must not forget that in the past month this administration has imposed one of the most onerous regulations on the American economy through EPA standards it admits will not have a measurable effect on health from the targeted emissions. Similarly, the president single-handledly rejected the Keystone XL pipeline permit and killed the chance for thousands of American blue collar workers to find good-paying jobs. Tonight the president offered a golden tongue on affordable energy, but for the past three years he’s clenched a green fist.

“The president continues to repeat the discredited mantra that America only has 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves. The Institute for Energy Research released last month the North American Energy Inventory, which uses government data to demonstrate that America is literally floating on energy. Under North American soil is twice as much oil as the combined proved reserves of every OPEC nation combined. As for natural gas, we have enough on this continent to provide America’s electricity needs for the next 575 years at current usage. The president just isn’t being honest with the American people about the vast energy supply that is literally under our feet. His own government reports show it.

“And in the same breath that he extolled the virtues of natural gas development and called for higher energy taxes on the companies that produce it, President Obama continues to press for more taxpayer subsidies for Solyndra-style green energy companies. He wants to increase taxes for Americans on the energy sources they use in order to give his friends and contributors in the green energy business another massive handout. Financing America’s energy future by taxing our current energy supply will not increase our energy security or strengthen our global position in the energy revolution. It will, however, make energy more expensive for struggling Americans and the businesses trying hard to keep pace with foreign competitors.”

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WASHINGTON D.C. — The interior department announced Tuesday that oil and gas lease sales on public lands increased 20 percent in 2011, generating more than $250 million in profits for taxpayers.  The fact, however, is that oil production on federal lands, lease sales, and revenue have drastically declined during the Obama administration.

“The American people need only to check their electric bills or the price they are paying at the pump to see just how well the Obama administration’s energy policies are working. Today’s announcement by the interior department that lease sales are increasing is misleading and disingenuous. The president promised to make energy prices “skyrocket,” and so he has. The American people deserve the facts about this administration’s anti-energy agenda, not more propaganda from Ken Salazar,” said IER Senior Vice President Dan Kish.

The Institute for Energy Research released the following facts to set the record straight:

Obama Claim:  The administration is increasing lease sales on public lands. Total leases issued on public lands were up 20 percent in 2011.

FACT:  Lease sales on public lands have steadily decreased over the last 25 years.

Obama Claim:  The administration raised more than $250 million in lease sale revenues in 2011, up 20 percent over 2010.

FACT:  Oil production on federal lands is down 13 percent in 2011: 97,721,813 barrels in 2011 versus 112,124,812 barrels in 2010.

FACT:  Offshore lease sales have plummeted more than $9.4 billion since the Obama administration took over. This means that Americans collected 258 times less revenue from offshore lease sales than they did during the last year of the Bush administration.

• 2008:  $9,480,806,620
• 2009:  $1,181,075,491
• 2010:     $979,569,294
• 2011:       $36,751,111

Obama Claim:  The administration is increasing the amount of federal lands available for domestic energy production.

FACT:  The average annual leases issued during the Obama administration is down 35.5 percent from the George W. Bush administration, down 50.7 percent from the Clinton administration, down 69.5 percent from the George H.W. Bush administration, and down 78.9 percent from the Reagan administration.

Although the surprise announcement did lead to an immediate drop in the price of crude, the fall was not as much as some might have expected and prices returned to the pre-release levels within 1 week. Economic theory can explain why. Moreover, to the extent that the Obama Administration recognizes that more oil leads to lower prices, it should tap into America’s vast “reserves” located in the Outer Continental Shelf and ANWR. These holdings dwarf the salt caverns of the SPR and tapping them would lead to a real increase in production as opposed to a short-term band-aid “fix.”

SPR Drawdowns and the Price of Oil

As this CNNMoney article reports, the surprise announcement, which added two million barrels a day to the market, caused the price of oil to drop more than 4 percent by the close of the day. (Interestingly, as of this writing—exactly one week later—the world price of oil is higher than it was before the announcement.)

As I have written previously on this blog, economic theory suggests that one-shot sales from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve under normal market conditions would be offset by the response of other players in the market, so that releasing oil from the SPR wouldn’t depress prices as much as one might have originally thought.

Here’s a summary of the argument: People who are sitting on large deposits of oil (the Saudis for example) set their current production rates to maximize the market value of their asset. If a producer extracts and sells more barrels of oil today, he earns more revenue today, but his actions (a) push down the current market price of oil, while (b) leave him with fewer barrels of oil to sell in the future, and therefore also (c) push up the future market price of oil.

Because of reasoning like this, we don’t need to worry about all the major oil producers foolishly selling every last barrel of oil this year. That would be a horrible business strategy, because it would crash the current price of oil while leading to $500-a-barrel oil next year. Since the owners of major oil fields are anything but stupid, they plan their operations out decades into the future. Rather, they decide on current production rates in order to maximize the long-run profitability of their operations.

So if the world oil market were more or less in equilibrium, what effect did the surprise announcement have? All of a sudden, it meant that two million more barrels of oil per day would be coming onto the market, than the major oil producers had previously forecast. That in turn means that the market price of oil in July will be lower (other things equal) than what the major oil producers had anticipated, before hearing the announcement.

Because of the changed circumstances, the original production plans are no longer optimal. Major producers could make more money (in light of the surprise SPR sales) if they reduced their output over the summer months, and deferred the extraction and sale of more of their inventory to the future, after the SPR drawdowns have finished. Even if the total amount of oil hitting the market remained above the original level, private speculators (sensing the prices were artificially low) would have the incentive to buy the excess oil and store it, waiting for prices to return to their normal levels.

If there were no real-world frictions, in principle the SPR announcements would have virtually no effect on oil prices at all. The extra two million barrels coming onto the market from the SPR sales would be perfectly offset by a combination of production cutbacks and private inventory accumulation. Effectively, the Obama Administration would have simply transferred 30 million barrels of its inventories from salt caverns in the southern United States, into the warehouses of private speculators and into the possession of Saudi Arabia in deposits buried under the sand.

Of course, in the real world, there are all sorts of complications with this theoretical benchmark. Oil prices really did drop upon the announcement. But the point remains that economic forces limit the lasting impact that even large-scale inventory sales can have on the world price of crude.

Getting a Bigger Bang

Since the Obama Administration apparently understands the (obvious) point that more oil leads to lower prices, it should heed IER’s long-standing call to remove the statutory and regulatory obstacle to the development of offshore, ANWR, and other oil resources. Whereas the SPR had (before the recent announcement) 726.5 million barrels of oil, the “1002 Area” of ANWR has an estimated 10.4 billion barrels of technically recoverable crude, while the figure for the OCS is more than 59 billion barrels. Thus there are about 96 times more oil “reserves” in ANWR and the OCS, than is contained in the SPR.

What’s even more interesting is that the conventional criticism of expanded domestic production—that it will take years to bring that new oil to the market—turns the economic logic above on its head. Suppose Saudi Arabia has made long-term planning decisions under the assumption that the roughly 70 billion barrels of U.S. crude will remain forever locked-up due to federal barriers. Then the U.S. government surprises everyone by announcing that this oil will actually be coming onto the market in a few years. Saudi officials would realize that their original forecast of the world price of oil over the next few decades was overly optimistic (i.e. too high), and they would rearrange their plans to extract more oil in the present before having to compete with the new U.S. production. This would cause more oil to hit the market in the present, thus lowering the present price of oil—even though the promised U.S. production might be years in the future.

Real-World Facts

Although our economistic reasoning sounds Ivory Tower, we have real-world evidence: When President George W. Bush announced in the summer of 2008 that he was ending the executive branch’s moratorium on offshore drilling, the price of crude dropped $9 per barrel during the speech itself. This was an immediate impact at least as great as the immediate drop in crude prices, following the recent SPR announcement. Yet Bush’s announcement by itself didn’t guarantee a single drop in new production, because the Congressional moratorium was still in place. Just the increased possibility of more future U.S. production, caused prices to drop as much as Obama et al.’s guaranteed delivery of 60 million barrels in the next month.

Conclusion

President Obama and his advisors undoubtedly recognize that Americans are seething over soaring energy and other prices. The drawdown in the SPR did push down prices (at least temporarily), but economic theory suggests that other forces would largely offset its impact. In both theory and practice, we know that opening up domestic energy resources to development would cause much bigger and lasting reductions in the price of energy, not to mention providing economic growth.

Speculators are characterized as cogs in the Wall Street greed machine who seek to make a quick buck off betting on oil commodity futures, an idea that many are all too happy to entertain in this post-financial meltdown age. However, the argument that speculative activity has caused this most recent escalation in gas prices ignores the fact that there has been speculation on commodities for centuries, and as Stossel writes, the players are “no more greedy or clever than they have been all along.”

The answer is, in fact, much more simple than politicians want you to believe as they lay blame at the feet of oil companies and speculators. It’s a straightforward matter of supply and demand. World crude oil and liquid fuels consumption grew to the highest level ever in 2010, with 86.7 million barrels per day (bpd) consumed in total. Most of the increase can be attributed to countries outside the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)—China, Brazil, and those in the Middle East—where rapid economic growth and quality of life improvements have led to increasing amounts of energy being used. Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, said growth in worldwide oil demand is exceeding growth in new supplies by 1 million bpd per year, with much of the new demand coming from China. Factor in Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) production restraints that seek to maintain favorably high oil prices, anticipated losses in Gulf of Mexico production, and recent global disruptions, it is unsurprising that oil commodity prices have spiked.

Furthermore, the U.S. Federal Reserve’s second round of inflationary monetary policy (QE2) has prompted investors to flee a devalued dollar in favor of non-income generating real assets, like oil and precious metals, and makes crude cheaper for investors using foreign currencies. As in 2008, when the first round of the Fed’s inflationary monetary policies began, oil prices have steadily risen since Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s announcement that the easy money policies may continue past the end of QE2 this June.

Speculators are merely a symptom of oil spikes, not the cause. Birol, in an interview with CNNMoney, said, “Speculators are only responding to what is going on in the markets… We don’t see enough oil in the markets. The major driver is supply and demand.” Furthermore, speculation even serves as a stabilizing function in a market that would otherwise be exceedingly volatile. In his op-ed, Stossel writes:

“Speculators help keep prices stable. When they foresee a future oil shortage—that is, when prices are lower than anticipated in the future—speculators buy lots of it, store it and then sell it when the shortage hits. They know they can charge more when there’s relatively little oil on the market. But their selling during the shortage brings prices down from what they would have been had speculators not acted.”

To reinforce the point that speculation is a legitimate economic function and that federal intervention would ultimately prove to be worse than the status quo, Stossel cites the 1958 Congressional action to ban speculation on onion prices. That’s right, Congress passed a law, amid mass public outcry, to ban speculative activity on the price of onions. The end result? Onion prices are actually some of the most volatile of all goods, and a study by the Financial Times found that the ban actually did the opposite of the intended effect.

Instead of trying to meddle with the market, Washington should focus on removing the roadblocks to domestic energy exploration to give America more leverage in the oil game. When President Bush finally lifted the U.S. embargo on its own offshore oil in July 2008, the price of oil dropped $9.26 per barrel while he was giving the speech. Crude oil traders and speculators believed that oil supplies would increase in the future, reducing prices. However, it is interesting to note that the market had a fairly apathetic response to President Obama’s recent proposals to increase domestic production.

The only marginal decrease in oil prices since the President’s announcement is indicative that players in the market do not anticipate that the proposals—which are simply reversals of policies implemented during the Obama Administration—will significantly increase the supply of oil. To impact oil prices on the scale of what happened when the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) moratorium was lifted in 2008, the Administration will need to adopt an energy policy that includes exploration in ANWR, more of the OCS, and more than the current 3 percent of onshore federal lands that are available for leasing. Until the Administration takes these major steps to produce more oil at home, its recriminations against speculators and shadowy market manipulators hold little water.

President Obama disagrees.  Currently, the President admits that he is in talks “with the major oil producers like Saudi Arabia to let them know that it’s not going to be good for them if our economy is hobbled because of high oil prices.”  The President obviously believes that increasing oil output from the world’s major oil producers would decrease the price of oil.  Unfortunately, he does not consider the United States to be one of those major producers.

In response to President Obama’s statements, Dan Kish, vice president of policy at the Institute for Energy Research, issued the following statement:

“The President now says his administration is pushing major oil producers to increase oil output in an effort to lower prices.  What he really needs is to have someone tell the government of the world’s 3rd largest oil producer to boost output.  In case he is unaware, that oil producer is the United States.”

“He could do that at his next cabinet meeting by telling EPA to stop holding up Shell’s drilling in Alaska and by telling Secretary Salazar to stop closing access to our nation’s energy supplies, which the Congressional Research Service says are larger than any country on earth.”

“The President is beginning to look like the Ugly American in his attempts to point the finger of blame anywhere but his record, which includes seeking higher taxes on energy and stopping energy production wherever possible.  It requires a suspension of disbelief to accept his protests about higher energy prices when that is his policy.  His chickens are coming home to roost.”

A country as technologically savvy as ours should not be outperformed by a communist country operating as if it were still 1959.  Cuba announced that this summer they will begin drilling deepwater oil wells with the goal of completing five by 2013.  Back in the United States, the Obama administration has only recently started issuing exploratory permits for offshore drilling and they’re attempting to move away from it as they approach other countries to continue.

Only a month ago President Obama told us, “We can’t drill our way out of this [energy crisis]. We must break our dependence on oil.” Yet in Brazil, a few weeks later, he stated that his administration wants to assist the Brazilian government “with technology and support” in developing its oil reserves.  He then went on to say, “And when you’re ready to start selling, we want to be one of your best customers.”

Well Mr. President, which is it?  Are we ceasing our domestic drilling or are we breaking our dependence on foreign oil?

It’s staggering to think that Cuba produced 21 million barrels of oil in 2010, about one half of its oil consumption needs.  Meanwhile, the United States has the ability and resources to become completely independent of foreign oil; with an estimated 163 billion barrels of conventional oil still in the ground, according to the Congressional Research Service.  That much oil would sustain our production for over 50 years.

So before Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar testifies at his next Senate hearing and goes on record saying: “…we [U.S.] do not produce enough oil in this country to influence price of oil because it’s set in world markets,” – he should do his homework, crunch the numbers, and report them to his boss.

This revelation is nothing new.  In fact, it is a historical fact that only about 30 percent of leases will ever produce energy.  The report itself states that historically,“producing acres as a percentage of leased acres have averaged about 30%.” Two weeks ago, Michael Bromwich, the director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement, told the House Appropriations committee that companies are “doing well” if they find oil or gas on one out of every three offshore leases.

Back in 2008, when lawmakers were trying out these same arguments, IER showed how energy leasing actually works in the real world.  We’ve also shown who is really hoarding taxpayer land:

Disregarding the facts of energy production, the Obama Administration is misleading the American people.  In response to the report, Daniel Kish, senior vice president of policy at the Institute for Energy Research, issued the following statement:

“The Secretary of Interior’s bad imitation of Captain Renault – ‘I’m shocked, shocked…to find that companies aren’t producing oil on every acre they’ve leased’ – may fool some people.  But scientists in the field of geology dismissed this urban myth the last time opponents of US energy production tried it back in 2008 as an excuse to oppose lifting the offshore moratorium. “

“In 2008, then-Senator Salazar opposed opening the OCS even if gas prices reached $10 a gallon!  So no one should be surprised that he is now trying to cover up his worst-in-history energy record, especially as gas prices climb for motorists and businesses.  The Secretary should let Americans go back to work producing energy: offshore, in Alaska, and in the west on government lands.  In addition, the Administration should start celebrating our own oil production instead of Brazil’s.”

“The Secretary’s report today, and the implication that something is wrong when it is not, is showing the American people the same contempt his Department was found guilty of by a federal judge who ordered him to stop the moratorium on drilling in the Gulf.”

“Perhaps the Secretary, a rancher, would understand it better on his terms:  bulls do not produce milk, though they are an important part of the process.”

President Obama making the case for offshore oil development in Brazil while the Gulf of Mexico remains in limbo.

President Obama was meeting with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff in Brasilia on March 19 when the subject of oil came up. Apparently, Brazil has a lot of it. The Tupi oil field off the shore of Rio de Janeiro in the Santos Basin contains a potential deepwater reserve of 100 billion barrels.

“By some estimates, the oil you recently discovered off the shores of Brazil could amount to twice the reserves we have in the United States,” Obama noted. “We want to work with you. We want to help with technology and support to develop these oil reserves safely, and when you’re ready to start selling, we want to be one of your best customers.”

When the American president said “you,” he’s referring to one of the largest corporations in the Americas — Brazil’s state-owned Petrobras oil company. Obama previously offered the company a $2 billion loan guarantee to help develop the oil field, but to date, Petrobras has yet to bite.

And when Obama claims that the Brazil Tupi oil field could amount to double the reserves here in the United States, he means the currently available reserves. That is to say, the domestic reserves that the Administration has not specifically placed under lock and key.

In the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska, oil production remains at a virtual standstill while an Administration “permitorium” on drilling continues unabated, save for three Gulf permits granted to operations which previously had permits and one allowing for new exploration (we’ll see how far that one gets before the green lawsuits commence). Meanwhile, American rig operators continue to go without jobs while the network of small businesses that support oil production have been dealt blows from which they may never recover. The consumer suffers from ever-higher prices at the pump and from higher transportation costs placed on the products they buy.

To be fair, while President Obama was in Brazil, one company took the occasion to announce that it has received Administration approval to begin deepwater drilling operations in the Gulf of Mexico: Petrobras.

If Obama seems to be taking a wrecking ball to domestic oil production while increasing our reliance on oil from unstable foreign regimes, he at least partially explained his reasoning while in Brazil. “In the United States, we’ve jump-started a clean energy industry, and we’ll soon have the capacity to produce 40 percent of the world’s advanced batteries.” Of course, “jump-started” is Washington speak for subsidized. So in essence, the President is more than happy to trade our energy security and tank our economy to lead the world in the production of batteries. You can’t make up stuff like this. If it wasn’t so deeply serious, it might be funny.

WASHINGTON- In today’s press conference, the President boasted of record high domestic oil production.  Once again, President Obama is spinning the facts in order to deflect the blame for the rising price at the pump.  In response, Thomas Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research, issued the following statements:

“Either President Obama is being misinformed by his energy advisors, or he is misleading the American public.  He continues to assert that ‘the U.S. has only 2% of the world’s oil’ when, according to the Congressional Research Service, the U.S. has at least 17% of the world’s oil.”

“In a recent report, CRS said that the U.S. has 19.1 billion barrels of proven reserves, which is the number President Obama cites as 2% of the world’s oil.  CRS, however, showed that between our proven reserves and oil predicted to be found, there is likely to be a combined 164.1 billion barrels, or 8.5 times as much as the president alleges.  And this figure doesn’t include oil shale, which has recoverable reserves of 1 trillion barrels, according to DOE.  Mr. President – let people look and they shall find.”

“The President’s anti-energy policies are a man-made disaster.  Try as he may to deflect responsibility away from his own policies, President Obama can’t escape from the simple fact that the actions of his administration have dramatically slowed down domestic energy production.  As a consequence, his policies are directly responsible for increasing gas prices.”

“In 2007, an analysis from the federal government’s Energy Information Agency (EIA) predicted that domestic offshore production would be 717.9 million barrels in 2010.  As a result of the Obama Administration’s policies, it was 600 million.  Likewise, the projected onshore production was 132.9 million barrels.  Under Obama, it was only 114 million.”

“Under President Obama’s policies, federal land and water production in 2010 was 136.8 million barrels less than was predicted in 2007, or a 16% drop from what was expected.”

“Oil production on federal lands is expected to dramatically decrease as a consequence of President Obama’s anti-energy policies.  In 2011, EIA estimates that oil production in the federal Gulf of Mexico will fall by 15 percent.  In 2012, it will fall by 26 percent from the 2010 production high water mark.  In contrast, production continues to increase on the state and private lands that are – at least for now – largely unencumbered by this administration’s anti-energy policies.”

“President Obama talks about increasing energy production in places like Alaska, and yet his own EPA revoked a permit that was already granted for offshore leases there.  President Obama needs to stop his war on affordable energy.  While he plays games with production numbers, the American people are suffering.  President Obama should spend less time spinning the facts at press conferences and more time reviewing and reversing his disastrous policies.”