As President Donald Trump made his pitch to the country’s top oil and gas executives last week as to why they should invest tens of billions of dollars in Venezuela’s oil industry, lawmakers on Capitol Hill were being briefed on his ouster of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro and the Trump administration’s plans for the South American nation.
Rep. Mike Levin, D-Calif., said the briefing failed to provide lawmakers with the information they’re seeking.
“I left with many questions and with no clarity on how much this has actually cost, nor how much this will cost in the months and years ahead,” Levin told Spectrum News, with the caveat he could not say much about the classified briefing.
Levin said the cost he is concerned about goes beyond the mission, and includes America’s role in Venezuela’s oil industry. President Trump claimed that energy companies will spend at least $100 billion to help rebuild the oil industry, but some executives who attended the meeting did not say they had agreed to the spending.
The California Democrat said he doesn’t want that cost passed off to Americans. He’s now leading a bill called the Protecting Taxpayers from Risky Investments in Venezuela Act alongside Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., to bar American tax dollars from being used to rebuild that oil infrastructure without congressional approval.
“The American taxpayer should not be on the hook for potentially $100 billion, $200 billion by some estimates, to rebuild this dilapidated infrastructure,” said Levin.
“The actual return on investment for the American consumer just isn’t there. Even if you apply the best-case scenarios and you say that Venezuela will have a period of political stability — certainly not guaranteed by any stretch of the imagination — and they were to revitalize their entire oil infrastructure, it would still, only yield based on what I’ve read maybe 10 cents on the gallon, maybe 15 cents on the gallon,” he continued. “It could actually lead to short-term instability in the global oil markets as well. So simply not worth it from a dollars and cents perspective for the American taxpayer.”
With Republicans controlling the House and Senate, the legislation faces an uphill battle. But Levin said he’s hopeful some of his Republican colleagues will get on board and reassert congressional authority over federal spending. He said he’s willing to talk to any colleague across the aisle interested in working with him and Merkley on it.
“We — the American government, the American taxpayer — have already spent billions and billions of dollars on this operation, regardless of what one thinks of its constitutionality,” said Levin. “I want to do all we can to try to prevent another forever war and try to prevent hundreds of billions being spent, in another boondoggle.”