Leadership Quote by Bobby Jindal

Jindal is doing something politicians do when they want a complicated policy to feel like common sense: he shrinks it. “Did a good thing,” “simple thing,” “automatic royalty relief” - the language is engineered to make a targeted subsidy sound like neutral plumbing. In three beats, Congress becomes competent, the policy becomes obvious, and the beneficiary disappears.

The specific intent is promotional and defensive at once. By anchoring the story in 1995, he borrows bipartisan, pre-partisan credibility: this isn’t some new ideological experiment, it’s settled wisdom. By stressing “automatic,” he signals certainty to industry - no messy case-by-case discretion, no political hostage-taking once the lease is signed. And by emphasizing “5 years” and “deep waters,” he frames the giveaway as temporary and technical, a narrow incentive to offset higher costs and risk.

The subtext is a familiar Gulf Coast argument: don’t call it corporate welfare; call it development. Royalty relief isn’t presented as foregone public revenue, but as the price of getting rigs moving, jobs created, and domestic supply secured. That’s why the quote is so insistent about simplicity: if the mechanism feels boring, the politics feel illegitimate to question. You’re supposed to hear “deep water” and think frontier, not balance sheet.

Context matters. The mid-90s were full of “competitiveness” rhetoric and faith in market-friendly nudges. Jindal’s retelling also foreshadows later fights over whether these incentives were overly generous, poorly capped, or quietly costly - a debate he preempts by making the original act sound like an uncomplicated win.