'Glenn Beck': President Obama Uses BP Oil Spill to Push for Energy Reform

This is a rush transcript from "Glenn Beck," June 16, 2010. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO, GUEST HOST: Last night, during President Obama's address on the BP oil spill, he turned the focus on the need for energy reform:

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PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: As we recover from this recession, the transition to clean energy has the potential to grow our economy and create millions of jobs, but only if we accelerate that transition, only if we seize the moment.

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NAPOLITANO: Is an energy bill the next item on the president's agenda? Joining me now Chris Horner, author of "Power Grab: How Obama's Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America," and my colleagues Liz Claman, Fox Business anchor.

Chris, first to you. What does the president want to do and how does he want to use the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico to help him do it faster, bigger and quicker?

CHRIS HORNER, AUTHOR, "POWER GRAB": Well, it's pretty clear that he showed contempt for all of us last night, Judge, by refusing the dog that didn't bark. He has been saying for two years precisely what he wanted to do to us.

He has said over and over eight times that Spain was the model for a green economy, which, of course, is central planning with — withdrawn and re-branded with splash of green paint on it.

And last night, by choosing to omit, now, I think for the first time, his European models for the green economy, he is acknowledging what we and some Spanish and some other European academics have been pointing out now for some time.

Today, in Spain, in fact, as the president was putting on his makeup last night, the Spanish media was going to press —

NAPOLITANO: Right.

HORNER: With stories noting that the socialist government had given the green jobs industry 48 hours to accept a massive cut in their subsidy or the jig was up because it's turning them into the next Greece bankrupting them and they can't afford it.

NAPOLITANO: Yes.

HORNER: The president cited for two years Spain as his model. He still wants to do it. He says we have to pump the gas further, not the brakes, despite what happened and all of the train wrecks he used to cite.

And last night, by refusing to cite them finally, I think for the first time he acknowledged that he knows what he is trying to do.

NAPOLITANO: As Margaret Thatcher used to say, the problem with socialism, sooner or later, you run out of other people's money to spend. Are we going through the sort of debate that the country went through 100 years ago? Which is better, free choice of individual investors and consumers or central planning by the government?

And is the government going to use one crisis after another crisis after another crisis to make the argument for central planning?

LIZ CLAMAN, FOX BUSINESS ANCHOR: But it doesn't, judge. It doesn't use a crisis. Go back just four decades, OK? We had the oil shock where the Arabs really stuck it to us. And I know you remember where whatever license plate ended in odd or even -

NAPOLITANO: Oh, yes.

CLAMAN: You had to wait in line or you didn't get gasoline that day.

NAPOLITANO: Great.

CLAMAN: From that, we learned nothing, judge. We have no energy policy after this. You know, Chris makes a point that President Obama wants to do this. You know, every president, whether it was Reagan or Bush or President Clinton brought up, oh, an energy policy. We still don't have it. That's an embarrassment.

JUDGE: Chris, is he going to push for cap-and-trade? Are they going to tell me that a federal agent has to come and inspect windows in my private home before I can sell it? And are they going to get that kind of a law passed as a result of the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico?

HORNER: Well, real quickly, I want to disagree slightly with Liz. We've learned since the oil shock that America's systems are the world's largest energy resources, the largest reserves and resources in the world.

So he tried to apply the opposite last night by saying that we're in deep water, so to speak, because we are running out of places to get it. That, too, is a hot poker in the eye of every hard-working American upon whom he seeks to impose energy poverty, which will mean poverty.

Now, cap-and-trade — will it come with his so-called green economy? So far, it has been intertwined with it. He said during the campaign he wanted to use it to bankrupt those energy industries he didn't like. He used that term, "bankrupt."

NAPOLITANO: Right.

HORNER: He said he wanted to use it to cause the electricity prices to skyrocket and to raise billions of dollars. So I don't know how he plans on doing what Spain has bankrupted itself with and what has been a train wreck in Denmark and Germany and Italy and elsewhere without the revenues.

I use the Freedom of Information Act to find out that the Treasury Department hopes for up to $400 billion per year, the equivalent, according to them, of the corporate income tax halt from cap-and-trade. So I think, yes, it's got to be part of it.

CLAMAN: Well, Chris, what you should be looking at the Freedom of Information Act or Yahoo Finance is that companies like Duke Energy and American Electric Power are actually for cap-and-trade.

They are actually trying to help craft legislation, because, of course, they want to get out in front of it. But if you talk to General Electric, you talk to AEP or to Duke Energy - they're big utilities. They've got carbon sequestration going. They've got all kinds of scrubbers for coal because they realize this time —

NAPOLITANO: I got to tell you both —

CLAMAN: And they're just trying to get ahead of it.

NAPOLITANO: I've got to tell you both, I am unhappy when the government is in bed with industry or industry is in bed with the government, whether you're a free market person or you believe in regulation.

CLAMAN: Oh, free market should always reign, judge. You know that.

HORNER: Can I address those rent seekers, judge?

NAPOLITANO: Chris agrees as well. Chris Horner, Liz Claman, thanks very much.

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