What can the federal government do to avert ballooning deficits, unsustainable entitlement programs, and unfunded tax cuts? A leaked document<\/a> from several House committees outlined a host of fiscal reform options available to the 119th Congress and President Donald Trump. Some promising ideas from the energy sector appear to be on the menu, including repealing the massive subsidies<\/a> in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and selling off some assets the federal government is either misusing or abusing, namely federal lands<\/a> and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.<\/p>\n Repealing the Inflation Reduction Act<\/strong><\/p>\n First and foremost, the IRA must be repealed<\/a>. It\u2019s a partisan giveaway to corporations and politically favored entities, and it undermines<\/a> permitting reform and sabotages<\/a> the precious little competition we have in the electricity sector. According to our estimates (from an upcoming policy analysis), the cost of the IRA could reach $2.04 trillion by 2034 and $4.67 trillion by 2050.<\/p>\n Congress must stop issuing blank-check subsidies with no expiration date. The huge cash transfer from taxpayers to private firms under the guise of environmentalism creates significant market distortions and an undue, unprecedented, and unending burden on taxpayers. Repealing the IRA will require political courage because the handouts have such strong and well-organized<\/a> constituencies. But it is absolutely necessary if we are to reduce wasteful government spending.<\/p>\n Reducing Federal Land Ownership<\/strong><\/p>\n According to a 2020 report<\/a> by the Congressional Research Service, the federal government owns \u201croughly 640 million acres, about 28% of the 2.27 billion acres of land in the United States.\u201d What are the odds the Founding Fathers intended the federal government to own such extensive land, including the majority of land in five states and 80% of Nevada?<\/p>\n Agencies like the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) under the Department of the Interior manage about 245 million acres<\/a> that are neither national parks nor military bases. In other words, there are significant opportunities to transition federal lands to private ownership without impacting national parks or historic sites.<\/p>\n In 2015, a Bureau of Economic Analysis paper estimated that the value of government-owned land was $1.8 trillion<\/a>, a number likely higher today due to rising land values. To be clear, securing $1.8 trillion in sales revenue from selling all federal land would be complicated and would barely put a dent in our national debt<\/a>. Nonetheless, selling a substantial portion of federal land could raise hundreds of billions of dollars, alleviate some fiscal strain, and improve economic efficiency by enabling Americans to purchase land and develop it however they see fit.<\/p>\n Selling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve<\/strong><\/p>\n Established 50\u00a0years ago, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) is an outdated and unnecessary government asset, especially in the current energy landscape. The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) highlighted<\/a> that the \u201cUnited States produces more crude oil than any country, ever,\u201d and is set to produce even more now that burdensome regulations and restrictions are being lifted.<\/p>\n The United States now has significant strategic petroleum reserves in our extensive shale formations stretching thousands of miles, from the Marcellus Shale<\/a> in New York and Pennsylvania to the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico. While it\u2019s easy to see why the SPR seemed like a good idea in 1975, times have changed. America is now the epicenter of global natural gas and oil production.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, the SPR now functions more like a political tool prone to abuse<\/a> than a cornerstone of national strategy. In 2021, President Biden sold nearly half the reserve, reducing its holdings to just under 400 million barrels<\/a> to improve his party\u2019s political outlook. Selling 400 million barrels would raise something like $25\u201328 billion in addition to the valuable infrastructure that could be auctioned off. Liquidating the entire enterprise would also help remove the federal government from the oil business, which is the correct course of action in a nation built on free enterprise.<\/p>\n Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n Restoring fiscal stability will require comprehensive reforms, but these three measures\u2014repealing the IRA, reducing federal land ownership, and selling the SPR\u2014represent meaningful steps toward reducing the size of government and easing taxpayers\u2019 financial burdens.\u00a0Limiting the size and scope of government is essential to preserving the economic and personal liberty of all Americans. With a thoughtful and deliberate garage sale, Congress can reduce government control and help Uncle Sam return to fiscal sanity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Travis Fisher and Joshua Loucks What can the federal government do to avert ballooning deficits,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":53531,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-investing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestlifeschedule.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestlifeschedule.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestlifeschedule.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestlifeschedule.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bestlifeschedule.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestlifeschedule.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestlifeschedule.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestlifeschedule.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestlifeschedule.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Uncle](\"https:\/\/www.cato.org\/sites\/cato.org\/files\/styles\/pubs_2x\/public\/2025-02\/garage%20sale%202.jpg?itok=I0lln2jK\")
<\/p>\n<\/div>\n