IN 2007, the new congressional leadership stated that its goal with respect to energy was “to achieve energy independence, strengthen national security, grow our economy and create jobs, lower energy prices, and begin to address global warming.” The energy bill that just passed the House of Representatives will achieve none of these objectives. Indeed, it will make things worse.

Provisions of the House bill include 1) increasing the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) mandates for automobiles and light trucks to 35 miles per gallon by 2020, a 40 percent increase over the current average; 2) requiring utilities to produce 15 percent of electricity through “renewable” sources, i.e. wind and solar; 3) and rolling back $16 billion in tax breaks for oil companies.

The Senate version of the legislation, yet to be voted on as I write this, would also require increased reliance on biofuels, especially ethanol — a provision popular among farm-state lawmakers. Indeed, the Senate bill mandates a five-fold increase in biofuel use by 2022. Since the House version does not include this provision, House-Senate negotiators must still reach a compromise on a biofuels mandate, but there is little doubt that a mandated increase in biofuels will be part of the final bill.

Charles River Associates (CRA), a highly respected economic-analysis firm, has analyzed the economic impact of the pending legislation, concluding that it will harm the U.S. economy by raising energy costs. According to CRA’s analysis — which takes into account jobs that would be created by the provisions in the legislation — implementing the legislation would result in a net domestic job loss of more than 2 million by 2020, 3.4 million by 2025 and nearly 5 million by 2030.

Higher energy and non-energy costs generated by the legislation mean that consumers must spend a larger percentage of their income to maintain their current level of consumption. By 2030, the average household could suffer a loss in purchasing power of $1,720. Higher energy costs tend to dampen demand for business investments. According to CRA, the proposed legislation will reduce aggregate investment in the United States by $220 billion by the year 2030.

CRA concludes that the legislation will raise the cost of petroleum products to end-users by roughly 44 percent over the baseline level by 2020, and that this cost will more than double over the baseline level by 2030. The result of all of these adverse effects will be a decline in the gross domestic product (GDP), according to CRA, of 4 percent, or over $1 trillion relative to the baseline, by 2030.

Congress seems intent on repeating the mistakes of the 1970s and early ’80s, when government attempted to micro-manage the energy market and pick winners and losers. The results were dismal then, and there is no reason to believe the outcome would be any different today.

The problem is apparent when considering the case of the most popular bio-fuel, ethanol. In fact, ethanol producers have benefited from preferential treatment since 1978. The hope that it would become viable in a few years and get “off the dole” has never been realized. Congress has apparently not learned that the reason such energy sources need subsidies in the first place is that they possess serious economic and technological shortcomings

If Congress were really serious about energy security and expanding the U.S. economy, it would reject the current policy that discourages the production of domestic oil and natural gas and would expand access to the vast deposits of energy resources beneath non-park federal lands in the West, Alaska, and the waters off our coasts.

According to the Minerals Management Service of the Interior Department, these areas hold an estimated 635 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas — enough to meet the needs of 60 million American homes with natural gas for over a century — and an estimated 112 billion barrels of recoverable oil — enough to produce gasoline for 60 million cars and fuel oil for 25 million homes for 60 years.

Of course, environmentalists will object to policies that provide access to domestic energy sources. But environmental concerns need to be placed in proper context. The production of any economic good entails “opportunity cost” — the highest valued alternative that must be given up in order to acquire the desired good. Thus the acquisition of one normal good must be balanced against one’s desire for other normal goods. All economic decisions involve trade-offs.

There’s an old saying that you can try to dress up a pig by putting lipstick on it, but in the end it’s still a pig. This describes Congress’s energy bill. President Bush has threatened to veto this pig, and he should.

Mackubin Thomas Owens is a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College and editor-designate of Orbis, the quarterly journal of the Foreign Policy Research Institute.