What Voters in the 6th Congressional District Should Know about Rep. Peter Roskam

Peter Roskam has spent a great deal of time touting his Energy VISION Act around the district lately. The act is supposed to be a plan to eliminate U.S. dependence on foreign oil imports in response to the crisis of high energy costs that has been caused by the last 8 years of war and mismanagement by George Bush enabled by Roskam and his Republican colleagues in Congress.

Roskam, who has attempted to block House Democrats at every turn in their efforts to develop a sound energy policy based in heavy emphasis on alternative, renewable sources of energy and increase energy efficiencies, now wants to implement a plan that he says will end our dependence on foreign oil in 15 years. Roskam’s plan emphasizes drilling in the environmentally sensitive Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and in currently protected areas of the outer continental shelf (OCS), which he says will ultimately yield a combined total of 3.9 million barrels per day.

This past Thursday Democrats gave Roskam a chance to put his money where his mouth is by bringing H.R. 6515: Drill Responsibly in Leased Lands Act of 2008 to the House for a vote. Instead, Roskam and his Republican colleagues blocked the measure.

Rep Steny Hoyer (D-MD) made the following statement about the legislation defeated by Roskam and his colleagues:

Drill Responsibly in Leased Lands. With Americans being pummeled by $4 a gallon gas, it is high time America did just that,” stated Rep. Hoyer. “However, after months of suggesting that the only answer to bring down gas prices is more drilling, House Republicans today showed their true colors by blocking the DRILL Act – a bill which would have decisively and responsibly increased domestic oil production.”

Specifically, the DRILL Act would speed up the leasing process of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A), an area of land west of the federally-protected Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) that contains an estimated 10.6 billion barrels of oil to ANWR’s 10.4 billion. The bill also incorporates the ‘Use It or Lose It’ legislation, which simply requires oil producers to drill on the leases they already have or relinquish them so that another company can produce the oil there. Finally, it would call on the President to use the powers of his office to facilitate the completion of Alaskan oil and gas pipelines, so products will get to market sooner, and it ensures that Alaskan oil will fill American gas tanks, not be exported to other countries.

“In addition to promoting responsible drilling, this bill tells the oil companies to drill on the leases they have, or let somebody else do it - but don’t just sit on them while Americans are paying $4 a gallon,” stated Hoyer. “I see no reason to give even more handouts of public land to companies enjoying record profits and billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies. Let them start on the land they already have, which will bring oil to the market more quickly.”

Oil and gas companies currently hold leases to 68 million acres of federal land and the Outer Continental Shelf on which they are not producing oil and gas. Eighty-one percent of estimated oil and gas resources on federal lands and waters are already available for development – 311 million acres. These reserves are equal to 107 billion barrels of oil and 658 trillion cubic feet of natural gas - more than 14 years of current U.S. oil consumption (7.5 billion barrels per year).

Roskam instead proposes a plan that:

• Allows oil companies to sit indefinitely on their existing leases without drilling while prices climb even higher allowing them to increase their future profits
• Puts highly sensitive ecosystems at risk of irreversible damage
• Makes no assurance that oil ultimately produced will make it into gas tanks in this country
• Relies on questionable math in its calculations regarding future energy independence

It is clear that there will be real action taken regarding the nation’s energy crisis until we elect a Democratic president this fall and increase the Democratic majority in Congress. Roskam and the Republicans are in Big Oil’s pocket and can be counted on to do absolutely nothing to help Americans who are suffering through this crisis.

Big Oil has been having a tough time lately. Since George Bush took office, gasoline prices at the pump have more than tripled, forcing the oil companies to absorb huge windfall profits and causing whining, irrational consumers and Democrats in Congress to question the large subsidies that the Bush administration and Republicans in Congress have provided to the companies and to ask themselves whether we should be using so-called “alternative” forms of energy.

Now just as things were beginning to look bleak for Big Oil, our own Congressman, Peter Roskam, has unveiled a plan to help the oil companies weather these difficult times. Disguised as a plan to address the high fuel prices that consumers so unfairly complain about, the Roskam plan cleverly nips all talk of renewable, clean, alternative energy sources in the bud, and secures our dependence on fossil fuels into the distant future.

The Roskam plan is stunning in it’s simplicity. It focuses on two major actions: tax breaks to the wealthy and unrestrained domestic drilling.

Under the Roskam plan, residents of the 6th district who are suffering hardship from high gasoline prices will be able to receive a substantial tax credit for trading in their Hummer or Escalade for a smaller, more sensible Lexus or Mercedes. Who said Roskam was insensitive to the needs of the disadvantaged?

For many years now, Democrats and other communists in the environmental movement have successfully thwarted Big Oil from drilling in protected areas offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in the name of protecting the environment. Well screw the environment! Peter Roskam’s energy plan tells these tree-hugging pansies who’s boss. Why drilling in ANWR alone will knock 4 cents off the cost of a gallon of gasoline within 20 years and supply a whopping 3 percent of our nation’s energy consumption no later than 2027. Democrats in Congress have tried to insist that the oil companies must first pursue drilling in the 5,500 oil leases that they currently possess. Roskam won’t rest until Big Oil has it all, tourists and pelicans be damned.

But Peter Roskam is no Johnny-Come-Lately to the cause of Big Oil. Since coming to Congress, Roskam has consistently used his votes to advance the interests of the Oil Companies and ward of threats posed by alternative energy technologies and increased fuel-efficiency standards.

Thank God, in these harrowing times, the oil companies have a friend like Peter Roskam. Remember that when you vote this fall.

Addendum: the pinkos over at Progress Illinois have a post questioning the math Roskam is using to promote his plan. Imagine. Suggesting that a sitting Congressman running for re-election might somehow use fuzzy math to his own political advantage. It boggles the mind.

Earlier this month, Peter Roskam voted to give a big gift to telephone companies: retroactive immunity from civil lawsuits for their role in George Bush’s illegal scheme to spy on Americans. Peter Roskam, would tell you, no doubt, that large campaign contributions from telephone companies and Roskam’s close personal ties to lobbyists for Verizon had absolutely no influence on his vote to obliterate the constitutional rights of his constituents. 

The vote came on 6/20. The bill was H.R. 6304, FISA Amendments Act of 2008. This so-called “compromise” on FISA allows the federal government to conduct mass untargeted surveillance of all communications coming into or going out of the country without any need to seek court approval, even if there is no evidence of wrongdoing. In those circumstances where court review is required, where there is a specific target, a prior court order is not required and the courts are not allowed to know who is being targeted. They may only review general procedures for establishing targets. When a court rules against the government it will be allowed to continue spying while it exhausts all appeals. The measure allows no effective check to the power of the government to spy on Americans and no effective oversight regarding the manner in which it applies that power.

The gift to the telephone companies contained in the bill is the assurance it provides that all lawsuits pending from the companies’ illegal activities in support of the Bush spying program will be dismissed. It does this by changing the standard so that the companies are not required to have received a legal order - any order is fine. ATT, one of Peter Roskam’s largest campaign contributors, and Verizon, who’s lobbyist’s Jason Roe and Kirsten Mork have close ties to Roskam, are no doubt pleased by this provision. Maplight.org, a campaign finance watchdog group , found that those lawmakers who voted for the bill received, on average, twice the amount in donations from large telephone companies.

Roskam’s vote is just one more example of his consistent pattern of giving a “rubber stamp” of approval to the worst abuses of the Bush administration and of placing corporate interests over the interests of his constituents. Voters who care about civil liberties should contact Roskam to protest his vote. Roskam can be reached at his Washington office at (202) 225-4561 or in Bloomingdale at (630) 893-9670.

Before the FISA amendment becomes a law, it faces a vote in the Senate. That vote has been delayed until next month. Concerned voters should also contact Senators Durbin and Obama to pressure them to do the right thing and protect our civil liberties and deny immunity to the telephone companies that have broken the law.

Peter Roskam has signed on as co-sponsor to H. CON. RES. 362, a resolution intended to dramatically escalate tensions between the United States and Iran and take another step toward George Bush’s and Dick Cheney’s dream of yet another war, this one against Iran.

This resolution, if passed, would express:

the sense of Congress regarding the threat posed to international peace, stability in the Middle East, and the vital national security interests of the United States by Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and regional hegemony

Further provisions include:

• Declaring that preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon is vital to our national security interests and must be dealt with urgently
• Urging the President to impose sanctions on banks and energy companies doing business with Iran
• Demanding that the President initiate immediately and dramatically an international effort to increase pressure on Iran to verifiably suspend uranium enrichment activities by imposing a blockade
• Urging the president to “lead a sustained, serious, and forceful effort at regional diplomacy to support the legitimate governments in the region against Iranian efforts to destabilize them, to reassure our friends and allies that the United States supports them in their resistance to Iranian efforts at hegemony, and to make clear to the Government of Iran that the United States will protect America’s vital national security interests in the Middle East.

All of this language, of course, is highly ironic, given that it is the United States that has disrupted peace in the Middle East through its unprovoked invasion and occupation of Iraq, and that the U.S. has been attempting to destabilize Iran for years, and that the U.S. Middle East policy is pretty much all about the U.S. maintaining hegemony in the region. The U.S. has been complicit in nuclear proliferation in the region and our “friend and ally” in the region, Israel, has been a nuclear power for years. If anybody poses a real nuclear threat of obliterating anyone else it is the threat that Israel poses to Iran. Israel has a right to defend itself. But does not Iran also have that same right? Iran has no history of aggressive war in the region. Both the U.S. and Israel do. Who is posing the real threat to peace and stability?

What this is all about mostly, is winning the U.S. election this fall, even if doing so has to mean armed confrontation with Iran, or at least threatening such confrontation.

Just as when Bush attacked Iraq, this build-up is all being based as an attempt to enforce United Nations resolutions. But the chief of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency denies that there is any urgent danger. Mohamad ElBaradei told Al Arabiya television in an interview:

“I don’t believe that what I see in Iran today is a current, grave and urgent danger. If a military strike is carried out against Iran at this time … it would make me unable to continue my work,”

“A military strike, in my opinion, would be worse than anything possible. It would turn the region into a fireball,” he said, emphasizing that any attack would only make the Islamic Republic more determined to obtain nuclear power.

“If you do a military strike, it will mean that Iran, if it is not already making nuclear weapons, will launch a crash course to build nuclear weapons with the blessing of all Iranians, even those in the West.”

Just as in the case of the war against Iraq, Bush & Roskam & company are basing their campaign for a new war on lies. Iran has renounced the use of nuclear weapons as contrary to Islamic law and the United States’ own intelligence estimate concluded that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003. Despite this the United States has continued feeding the IAEA incorrect reports of nuclear sites.

Bush’s war against Iraq has brought the U.S. economic misery, cost thousands of young lives, and is rapidly leading us to $5/gallon gasoline. Meanwhile it has cost Iraq a million excess deaths due to violence, almost a third of them at the hands of the U.S. War against Iran will bring more of the same, and worse.

If you live in the 6th district and want to stop this chain of agressive wars, please contact Peter Roskam and demand he renounce his support for Bush’s new war against Iran. Roskam can be reached at his Washington office at (202) 225-4561 or in Bloomingdale at (630) 893-9670.

Peter Roskam is fond of telling anybody who will listen that high gas prices are the number one concern among residents of his district. This, of course, just goes to show how out of touch he is with the majority of his constituents. High gas prices are a concern but we haven’t forgotten about the war and all the other crimes committed by the Bush administration for which Roskam shares responsibility because of his silence and his votes.

Walt Zlotow at Heartland Progressive, another of Roskam’s constituents, has posted an excellent letter to Peter Roskam regarding his failure to acknowledge his responsibility for and his constituents’ concern regarding the war. Go read it.

Many Congressmen are cozy with Washington lobbyists but I doubt many have gone as far as Roskam did in immortalizing a couple of revolving door lobbyists in a painting in his Washington office.

According to “The Hill”, last month Peter Roskam’s wife Elizabeth, an artist, presented her husband with a painting she did depicting a scene from Roskam’s 2006 congressional campaign. The painting features the Roskams and their children as well as number of current and former staff members:

Jason Roe, a lobbyist with the Federal Strategy Group who was Roskam’s campaign manager, is also in the painting. The artist put him in a Michigan State University hat to reflect his diehard Spartan tendencies — the school wouldn’t accept him — but “humbled him” by dressing him in blue and maize, the colors of rival University of Michigan.

Other campaign aides, including Dean Thompson, Roskam’s legislative correspondent, and Brigitta Johnson, Roskam’s scheduler, are also in the painting.

David Mork, Roskam’s senior legislative assistant, and Mork’s then-girlfriend and now-wife Kirsten Mork are entwined in the painting. After meeting on the campaign trail for Roskam, the two worked together in the congressman’s office until they decided to marry.

Kirsten then landed another job as an associate lobbyist for Roe’s Federal Strategy Group.

Elizabeth Roskam is pleased her husband has the painting front and center in his office. “It’s something Peter can look at when he’s at his desk, a reminder of the fun times of the campaign.”

Isn’t that special. Seriously, it sounds like a beautiful gift, but that, of course, is not the point of my posting it here.

The point is simply to alert Peter Roskam’s constituents that there is a rather close connection between his office and the Washington lobbying firm Federal Strategy Group. Jason Roe, Roskam’s former campaign manager and Kirsten Mork, Roskam’s former Deputy Campaign Finance Director and former legislative assistant are lobbyists there. Roe is also a donor to Roskam’s current congressional campaign. Roskam’s current legislative assistant, David Mork, is married to Kirsten.

Here’s what the Federal Strategy Group has to say about it’s product:

More than any other lobbying firm, Federal Strategy Group understands what you want and we have the experience and expertise to deliver it. You want results - not process. Our team provides the access, advocacy, and advice to help you achieve those results.

First, we offer unparalleled access to top decision-makers. The abundance and strength of these relationships makes our team uniquely able to reach key public officials. Our lobbyists were selected from the top ranks of government, in part, because they have excelled in that professional arena. They bring with them relationships cultivated over years of public service. As part of our team, they grow and strengthen these relationships within government. As a result, Federal Strategy Group can open doors to get your message heard by the right people.

Maybe I’m too jaded but it sounds to me like what they are marketing is access to Peter Roskam and to other elected officials that they may be friendly with. And, as a voter and a citizen, it strikes me as wrong.

According to Open Secrets, Federal Strategy Group’s current clients include Verizon and American Airlines. Voters should bear that in mind as they examine Roskam’s bill sponsorship and voting record going forward.

Interestingly, when I tried today to verify today that David Mork is still on Peter Roskam’s staff, I found that I was unable. Neither Roskam’s Congressional website nor the House website provide any means for citizens to view a list of their Congressman’s staff members. Roskam likes to talk about transparency. He could make that happen tomorrow: a list of current staff members with bios on his House website. What about it Peter? Do we as citizens have a right to know? Roskam should also consider publishing his schedule on a regular basis so that we know who is lobbying him on what issues.