By Senator John Barrasso/Source: Politico

During his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama promised that jobs would be his No. 1 priority.

He didn’t say “some” jobs — he said jobs.

Obama and his administration have immediately made it clear that they will continue to pick winners and losers in our economy. The president’s recent fiscal year 2011 budget proposal opened up the administration’s latest front in the war on jobs in the Western United States.

While Obama and members of his administration were quick to describe the budgetary taxes and regulations as part of their battle against Big Oil, the truth is that these measures directly hurt American workers and kill red, white and blue jobs.

This couldn’t come at a worse time.

In Wyoming, oil and gas producers and related industries are already struggling to make ends meet. The rig count is down, and folks have been laid off. The Wyoming Department of Employment reports that employment in the state’s oil and gas industry increased slightly in November 2009, after a loss of thousands of jobs over the previous year. The last thing energy workers need is for the administration to take steps that will send them back to the unemployment line.

The president’s new budget includes several measures that will discourage job creation in the West. First, the budget will levy $36.5 billion in taxes on American oil and natural gas production. This includes removing tax incentives that independent oil and gas producers heavily rely on to invest in their businesses. These producers are my constituents. Many of them are small-business owners or employees. In fact, independent producers — not Big Oil — develop 90 percent of domestic oil and natural gas wells. They also produce 82 percent of U.S. natural gas and 68 percent of U.S. oil.

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