“Far from helping America’s energy needs, this legislation drills down into America’s energy sector and hits a gusher of government waste, bureaucratic regulations, special interest giveaways and free-market distortions.”

(Alexandria, Virginia) — The non-partisan 60 Plus Association, America’s largest free-market seniors advocacy organization, with over 7.2 million supporters, today issued a statement in strong opposition to a bill sponsored by Sens. Murkowski (R-AK) and Cantwell (D-WA) entitled the Energy Policy Modernization Act of 2015. Said 60 Plus Vice President Matthew Kandrach in his objections to the legislation:

“While possibly well-intended, the Murkowski-Cantwell energy proposal is absolutely the wrong prescription for America’s energy sector and American consumers, which certainly includes 40 million U.S. seniors, more than 70% of whom are on fixed incomes and worry about paying their monthly utility bill.

“Far from helping America meet its current and future energy needs, this legislation drills down into our energy sector and hits a gusher of government waste, bureaucratic regulations, special interest giveaways and free-market distortions.  It creates a Dodd-Frank style ‘Working Group on Energy Markets’ that vests government bureaucrats with expansive and redundant authority over energy producers.  More dictates and control from Washington is the last thing we need, especially given the disastrous impact we’ve seen in our banking industry.

“60 Plus is thoroughly devoted to free-market energy principles that provide consumer choice and lower costs to America’s 40 million senior citizens and their families.  We learned long ago that government interference, federal control and added bureaucratic oversight is both wasteful, expensive, inefficient and hurts consumers in the end. For these reasons this legislation should be defeated.”

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