It’s clear the Democratic Congress is the villain in high gas prices.
There is plenty of oil to be found off the coasts of the U.S. and in Rocky Mountains shale. Moratoriums, some for 30 years, have blocked development, leaving
Americans at the mercy of the Middle East, Russia and Venezuela.
This year alone American consumers of oil and its derivatives will be sending almost $700 billion to the Middle East, $400 billion of it to Saudi Arabia. That’s about 130% of the American defense budget.
John McCain has said it is foolish not to develop our own resources to end our dependency on foreign oil. He favors drilling offshore and in the Rocky Mountains (Obama is against). McCain believes we should develop nuclear power as well; Obama is opposed. Transportation runs on oil and our national security is endangered by continued reliance on unstable, unfriendly and enemy oil producers.
Republicans have made repeated efforts in Congress to lift the drilling moratoriums, but they have been blocked at every turn by the Democratic leadership.
As an example, just recently Republicans on the Senate Appropriations Committee proposed to end the moratorium blocking extraction of oil from shale on federal lands in the Rocky Mountains. On a 15-14 party line vote, the Democrats beat back the effort to help bring the price of gasoline down.
Yes, it will take several years to get the oil flowing. Congressional Democrats have made that point for years in defeating Republican proposals to drill. If we'd started drilling years ago, the oil would be flowing now.
Republican senators Hatch of Utah and Allard of Colorado were asked by Fortune Magazine about the damage Senate Democrats were doing by blocking the drilling. After all, it’s estimated that there are “800 billion barrels of recoverable oil shale in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming alone,” rivaling the oil fields of Saudi Arabia.
Fortune: Why do you consider developing oil shale such a high priority?Sen. Hatch: We have as much oil in oil shale in Utah, Wyoming and Colorado as the rest of the world's oil combined. Liberals and environmentalists can talk all they want about wind, solar and geothermal - all of which I'm for - but last time I checked, planes, trains, trucks, ships and cars don't run on electricity. 98% of transportation fuel right now is oil. Ethanol is the only real alternative, and we're seeing that ethanol has major limitations….
People are going to go berserk when they find out that all along we had the capacity, within our own borders, to alleviate our dependency in an environmentally friendly way. (emphasis added)
That’s it, in a nutshell. The Democratic Congress refuses to take steps to make more of our own gasoline available to American motorists. Will they be as stubborn (stupid?) when gas prices go to $5, $6 a gallon?
