Montana Eyes Record Oil Lease, As Dems Push Energy Taxes

A record oil and gas lease sale was recorded in Montana, bringing in $1.2 million for the schools. Governor Greg Gianforte (R-MT) shared the news this week, as he presses for made in America energy.

Gov. Gianforte: We’re ramping up American-made energy in Montana. This quarter, Montana saw a record-setting oil and gas lease sale on state trust lands.

We all can see the high gas prices. Maybe folks in California are used to paying $4 or more for a gallon of gas, but Montanans are not used to those prices when we want to get out and enjoy Big Sky Country.

If you think gas prices are high now, imagine if President Joe Biden and Congressional Democrats had their way. In the past year alone, Biden and the Democrats proposed 17 additional taxes on made in America energy.

Grover Norquist with Americans for Tax Reform joined us on Montana Talks with Aaron Flint to dive into the details of the proposed tax hikes.

He says things "have gotten very bad because of inflation, because of the shutting down of the pipeline from Canada, because of the not letting people drill on federal land. But he says it could get worse.

Grover Norquist: They want to add a $22 tax per barrel. So when the price of oil goes down from $100 to $80, we go that's great. That's great, right?They want to take it back up to $100 with a $22. Tax. So that's a significant hike in the gasoline that you use. They're going to do home heating-$8 billion dollar increase on home heating. Increasing taxes on crude oil, thinking you might not notice that, that's $13 billion. They want to tax drilling costs $10 billion, these all add up by the way, these two are not side to side, these add on top of each other. It is just a series of different tax hikes, all of which are designed to make it more difficult to look for oil and sell oil here in the United States.

He added that the Democrats also want to continue to block the Keystone Pipeline. Click below for the full interview with Grover Norquist.