Obama to seek double funding for clean energy R&D by 2020

But referring to Republican candidates’ “gloom and doom tour in New Hampshire”, Mr. Obama added, “I guess you can’t please everybody”. After all, the oil industry was more than happy to pay $40 or $50 per barrel not too long ago, when that’s the price the market set.

The White House acknowledges those factors, and argues a GOP-led Congress has done little help advance Obama’s job training agenda.

According to Reuters, President Obama will propose the additional fee in his upcoming fiscal 2017 budget submission to the House of Congress, which will happen next week.

Oil prices are at their lowest point in more than a decade, which some policymakers believe provides an opportunity to minimize the impact of such a fee on consumers. The speaker’s office on Friday called the fee a “radical” tax and said Mr. Obama “wants to cement his legacy as the most anti-energy president”.

However, critics say the move will curb domestic production and hurt consumers.

 Paul Bledsoe, an independent energy consultant and former aide to the Clinton White House, told the Washington Post the proposal should not be considered radical but a return to a “standard practice” of raising fuel taxes that dates back to President Eisenhower’s government (1953-61).

The president said, “Ten years from now, 15 years from now, 20 years from now, we’re going to be in a much stronger position when oil starts getting tight again, prices start going up again we will have further weaned our economy off dirty fuels”. “I also give them credit for having the guts to say how they would pay for all of it. That’s very unusual in this area”.

He pointed to signs of wage and income growth, job growth, lower oil prices and increasing numbers of Americans with health insurance as evidence of that claim. As part of his proof, Ryan quoted a 40,000 decrease in coal jobs since the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan announcement as well a quote from White House economic adviser Jeff Zients.

The plan would use the money raised to make public investments in transportation and incentivise the private sector to reduce America’s reliance on oil and also to cut carbon pollution.