Posted by
Roxanna M. on Tuesday, May 13, 2008 6:29:52 PM
An excellent article in Investor's Business Daily entitled "Who Is Really Responsible for the High Prices You Pay For Gasoline?" hits the nail square on the head.
"For the last 28 years, Democrats in Congress and a few Republicans have again and again opposed our drilling for oil in Alaska's ANWR area when we knew it contained at least 10 billion barrels of oil we could be using now."
* For the past 31 years, Congress repeatedly prevented us from building any new oil refineries that we now badly need.
* More recently, congressional Democrats defeated and discouraged any bill that would let us drill in the deep sea 100 miles out. However, it's OK for China to drill there.
* As a further indictment of our Congress, since the 1980's it has continually stopped all building of nuclear power plants while France, Germany and, yes, Japan, plus 12 other major nations, did build plants and now get 20% to 80% of their energy from their wise and safe nuclear plant investments.
* From 1990 to 2000, U.S. crude oil demand rapidly accelerated by 7.41 quadrillion BTUs, according to Department of Energy data. And our rate of foreign oil dependency dramatically increased while our domestic oil production steadily declined.
* Under the eight Clinton years, U.S. oil production declined 1,349,000 barrels per day, or 19%, while our foreign imports increased 3,574,000 barrels per day, or 45%.
IBD asks the following questions:
Were Democrats and members of Congress together merely short-sighted, with only a few having any real business experience?
Were they just ignorant about economics - the fact that the law of supply and demand determines the price of all commodities such as oil, steel, copper, and lumber?
Were they simply and utterly irresponsible and incompetent in their actions that led us to become dangerously dependent on increasing oil imports from foreign countries?
IBD thinks it's all of the above.
"The unintended consequence of the Congress members' poor judgment and meddling micromanagement of U.S. energy policy is that they actually hurt most the very people they always profess to be able to help . . . Democrats kowtowed to the wishes of their environmental supporters over the basic needs of 300 million American citizens . . . It is a national disgrace that all they now know how to do is relentlessly criticize, complain and condemn. They always attempt to blame, investigate and scapegoat someone else, in this case U.S. oil companies, when Congress is the true villain of ineptness for constantly blocking and obstructing every effort for us to become more productive and less dependent on foreign oil."
"Do those now in Congress really think Middle America's voters are so gullible that they will believe that its latest best and brightest answer to increasing our supply or oil and gas is to slap a 25% windfall penalty tax on oil companies and remove all other incentives for oil companies to drill and explore for oil."
In a word, yes, that's exactly what they believe.
In the meantime, the children in charge of this country are not about to take any responsibility whatsoever for their criminal incompetence. They're going to obfuscate, parry, dissemble, deflect, and downright lie about how we got where we are. Don't even think of asking them to do something constructive. They don't know how.