What a difference a year makes. It seems like just yesterday that Barack Obama was proclaiming during his 2010 State of the Union speech that the U.S. needed to open up new offshore areas to increased oil and gas drilling. However, in the year since, the Macondo oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico seems to have wiped away any goodwill the public had gained toward the oil industry.

In its place, we see a renewed desire for alternative energies and for cutting off tax incentives to the energy industry. In President Obama’s latest State of the Union, he pointed out the recent record profits of the majors, and joked that they can do without money from taxpayers.

The president said, “I’m asking Congress to eliminate the billions in taxpayer dollars we currently give to oil companies.”

The fact is, this is selective interpretation of tax language. The American people don’t give money to the energy industry. Rather, the government just never gets certain tax money from the industry in the first place, due to industry tax breaks. Your mileage may vary on whether or not the money is necessary.

So just what will the windfall be for the government should these tax breaks be halted? The answer: $20 billion during the course of 10 years, according to the Houston Chronicle. That comes to only about $2 billion a year, barely a drop in the bucket of our energy needs. That’s what all this political hubbub has been about?

The fact is, the federal government would make more money by encouraging the energy industry to expand operations into new areas, possibly creating new companies and increasing the tax base, than it can by just soaking existing companies through increased user fees.

So, how does the business community see the current state of the union? The U.S. government has turned its back on the fundamental bedrock of the rule of law as it relates to energy, says Karen Harbert, president and chief executive of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21st Century Energy.

“We need to have certainty in energy regulation,” she said in a February teleconference titled “Facing Our Energy Realities: A Plan to Fuel Our Recovery.” “Revising or constantly changing energy regulation is leading to a lack of investment both in conventional and renewable energies.”

How about money coming into the U.S.? Well, that appears to be affected by recent legislation also. Harbert said when it comes to financing for both traditional and renewable energies in the U.S., investors are taking their money somewhere else.

“It is very hard to invest in the U.S. today. We are sending very negative signals to the capital markets and investors about investing in energy here.”

Legislation such as the National Energy Act, intended to encourage cleaner air and water, has instead been used to block energy development, Harbert said.

Harbert warned that due to increasing concerns of environmental impacts the U.S. is at risk of suffering from “banana syndrome,” namely “build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone.” She argues that irrational fears and regulations prevent the development of land for energy exploration and the building of necessary infrastructure to transport energy.

The oil and gas industry currently supports more than 9 million jobs in the U.S., and any long-term curtailing of such energy development can have increasingly negative effects on an already fragile economy. Harbert said there should be an adult discussion on energy usage instead of relying on political rhetoric to shape policy.

“We are very concerned about the signals being sent from the administration that will prohibit the access to new leasing. The five-year plan put forth by the Department of the Interior takes more land off the table then it puts on the table.”

Harbert says drilling and exploration is being slowed down considerably, if not stopped altogether. The Gulf of Mexico has yet to recover its workload prior to the spill. Producing offshore Alaska and the Atlantic seaboard are basically frozen in place.

So ultimately, where does this leave U.S. energy policy? Once again, it’s being lost in a fog of political farrago. Like pretty much every president going back to Richard Nixon, Obama is promising us independence from foreign energy providers in the form of a magical replacement.

This is a mistake. As many commentators have said, the world will need every form of energy available to it in the future. Oil, gas, biofuels, renewables, nuclear; you name it, it’s on the table. Any further attempt to curtail the oil and gas industry in the U.S. will just leave us slipping on the banana.