Interior Secretary Ken Salazar this afternoon again blasted House Republicans for making what he called a false promise to the American public that opening new lands and waters to domestic oil and gas drilling will quell high gasoline prices.

For the second time in as many days, Salazar fired salvos at his critics in the oil and gas industry and its allies on Capitol Hill, who he claimed are using the price of oil as fodder "to distort the truth" about the nation's energy dilemma.

"I think Americans deserve the facts," Salazar said when asked what prompted his recent political offensive. "The bumper-sticker statements of these times I don't think are the kinds of statements that are telling the American people what is really going on."

In an election-style speech at the New Democratic Network in Washington, Salazar spotlighted the Obama administration's success in permitting dozens of renewable wind, solar and geothermal projects on public lands in its first three years in office.

He said the Interior Department "in the very near future" expects to issue final approval for a 350-megawatt project on a tribal reservation in Nevada that will become the first commercial-scale solar facility in Indian Country. The Bureau of Indian Affairs released a final environmental impact statement for the project last month.

"One of the things we need to do in Indian Country, and one of the things we've talked to tribal leaders about, is that we need to make believers out of the skeptics," Salazar said.

But Salazar today hammered hard on a Congress he portrayed as increasingly out of touch with the American people and unable to pass the policies needed to ensure renewable energy succeeds. For a second time, Salazar compared Republican promises to the wizardry of children's novels.

"When you listen to some of the members of the House of Representatives, they are still living in what I consider to be an imaginary and fairy-tale-type land where they think we can simply take one of Harry Potter's wands and somehow bring gasoline prices down," Salazar said. "But it's good that there are other people who understand the real world of energy."

Salazar again urged Congress to overcome election-year gridlock and pass three measures he has called low-hanging legislative fruit. They include implementation of a transboundary agreement with Mexico that would allow new drilling in a disputed area in the Gulf of Mexico, extension of key clean energy tax incentives, and codification of organizational and safety reforms Interior implemented in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon spill.

On the third point, Salazar acknowledged that the Senate shares part of the blame for failing to pass a bill.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in 2010 passed a comprehensive oil spill response package unanimously, but has been stymied this Congress by disagreements over how to allocate revenues from offshore drilling.

Salazar recalled his time as a Democratic senator from Colorado and praised bipartisan effort by Sens. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) to pass major energy bills in 2005 and 2007 -- the first time when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress, the second time when Democrats had the majority.

"It was a time when Washington was not dysfunctional," said Salazar, who was a member of the ENR committee that Bingaman now chairs. "What has happened is that people in Washington here today seem to be more interested in scoring political points than they do in solving the problem."

But his focus quickly returned to the House, which he urged to take up the Senate's two-year transportation bill. The $109 billion bill, which passed last month by a sizable bipartisan majority, would create construction jobs, restore the Gulf of Mexico and significantly boost funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, a core Obama administration priority, Salazar said.

He said the future of clean energy development depends largely on Congress' ability to extend tax incentives.

His call comes a day before a House Ways and Means subcommittee will hold a hearing to discuss the future of renewable energy incentives, including the production tax credit for wind that expires at the end of this year, as well as programs such as the 1603 grant program that expired in December (E&E Daily, April 23).

"We need to make sure investors who are willing to invest in those kinds of companies aren't subjected to the financial uncertainties that comes with the stop-and-start policies of the past," Salazar said.

Extending the production tax credit for wind has broad bipartisan support and is seen as the top priority for many renewable energy advocates on Capitol Hill. Reps. Dave Reichert (R-Wash.) and Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) have introduced a bill that would extend through 2016 the PTC for wind and other renewable sources such as biomass or geothermal, and 91 House lawmakers have signed on as co-sponsors.