Drill, baby, drill? Yes, said Trump

As recently as 2011, members of Congress were worried about America’s “increasing reliance on hostile countries for energy.” Now, there's a lesson in how quickly things change.

In less than a decade, the nation’s energy situation has been altered so dramatically as to be unrecognizable. Not long ago, America was in abject and needless dependency on foreign oil, importing 64 percent of what it consumed as recently as 2007. Today, the nation produces more than 76 percent of what it consumes. It leads the world in the production of petroleum liquids. Its oil exports have gone from zero to more than 2 million barrels a day in just a few years.

President Trump has taken measures recently to take advantage of our growing dominance in world energy production. His Interior Department is moving to allow offshore drilling in many regions previously off limits. He has also killed an Obama-era rule that would have imposed unjustifiable costs on people fracking for oil on federal lands.

Increased oil production will help low-income consumers and people looking for skilled jobs in the economy of the next two decades. It might also help calm turbulent regions of the world by reducing the flow of petrodollars to terrorists and cutting the power that hostile regimes have over life in this country.

It will modestly help America rectify trade imbalances, against which Trump rails. It will also reduce the federal deficit, as Uncle Sam collects the leases of oil drilled on public lands and the taxes paid by thousands of new hires in the oil industry.