Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Speaker of the House, is stuck in the "we can't drill our way out of this problem." She recently told The Hill newspaper that "this call for drilling in areas that are protected is a hoax, it's an absolute hoax on the part of the Republicans and this administration."
She doesn't care about the price of gasoline. Worth some $50 million, she is not hurting at the gasoline pump. In fact, she probably likes gasoline at $4. It means we'll use less, which will help the battle on global warming (a recent study suggests that more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will increase crop yields, but I digress once again).
Even if new drilling only reduced the price of gasoline by a few cents, at least my dollars would be buying American oil, not Saudi, Iranian, Nigerian, Venezuelan, etc. Instead of funding rogue regimes, we would be funding our own economy.
How can our Speaker of the House and many other democrats deny us that?
She is intent on preventing votes on opening more areas to offshore drilling despite the stirring of a revolt by rank-and-file Democrats after months of concerted effort by House Republicans. In other words, she has ordained herself Queen of America, and nothing gets voted on without her O.K. Even George Bush doesn't have that kind of power.
We send our representatives to Congress to vote on issues. But not in Pelosi's House, where she, and she alone calls the shots. No wonder the approval rating for Congress is only 9 percent, according to some polls (and at the most, 18 percent).
Even Sen. Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader, who is normally just as liberal as Pelosi, is twisting, saying that "I'm not knee-jerk-opposed to anything." Of course, we won't include his "The War is Lost" mentality of recent past.
The Democrat solution is more regulation (always the mantra of the left) of oil futures traders, more hearings and grilling of oil executives, and yet surprisingly a couple of good ideas: the Bureau of Land Management should speed up the leasing of approved areas, ban the export of American oil, and urge the completion of the Alaskan oil and gas pipelines.
But no more drilling or using our own resources. We'll just ask the Saudis nicely to provide us more, and I'm sure they will.
How naive. To solve the current energy "crisis" will take a multi-front strategy, and getting more of our own resources is one part of the attack. We have enough to supply our own needs, if only the Democrats had a brain enough to let us.
1 comment:
Great points, Steve. The liberals, of course, don't care that our money would be funding our own economy instead of foreign countries, they care that the ignorant American public won't see more than a few cents difference and think the liberals aren't doing anything to help (God forbid). Also, the uproar over not lifting the ban on drilling, citing that it would take a decade or two to show any signs of relief, is ridiculous, because had then-President Clinton done it ten years ago, we wouldn't be having the problem now. So instead of acting, they are just going to blow more hot air and do nothing. So frustrating.
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