“If $75 a barrel oil and a $3 average for a gallon of gasoline isn’t a wake-up call, then what is?”–Senator Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.), April 23, 2006
While Northeastern Republicans (A.K.A. RINOs) have joined the liberals in Congress calling for “hearings” on whether Big Oil has been “gouging” customers in a deliberately collusive manner and for the imposition of “wind fall profits taxes” (as if taxing oil companies more would produce more oil and natural gas), the Wall St. Journal Editors perfectly summarize the real objectives of liberals like Chucky Boy Shumer.
The dirty little secret about oil politics is that today’s high gas price is precisely the policy result that Mr. Schumer and other liberals have long desired. High prices have been the prod that the left has favored to persuade Americans to abandon their SUVs and minivans, use mass transit, turn the thermostat down, produce less consumer goods and services, and stop emitting those satanic greenhouse gases. “Why isn’t the left dancing in the streets over $3 a gallon gas?” asks Sam Kazman, an analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who’s followed the gasoline wars for years.
All Bush has to do here to go from 37% approval to 75% is what we have said all along.
Aside from closing the borders immediately and deporting all “crim-aliens” (illegal aliens who constitutes 40% of the federal prison poulation directly subsidized by the American taxpayers- i.e. not “undocumented workers”), Bush needs to immediately call for Congress to reduce or abolish all federal gas taxes, end the onerous EPA regulations on required oxygenates, and call for immediate opening up of ANWR and other drilling areas in the Outer-Coastal Shelf.
Big oil companies make considerably less than your average Miramax film in terms of raw profit and the price of gas at the pump in the U.S. has risen 25% less than the rise in the global price of crude oil since 2003 according to Wall st. economist Michael Darda as reproted in the WSJ.
While we should always look at technology and conservastion as ways to reduce our dependency on foreign oil, only immediate domestic development and production along with a concommitant reduction in taxes and regulations will result in more plentiful oil and gas, lower prices for consumers at the pump (especially poor and fixed income citizens), and less dependency on unstable ARAB country-suppliers in the near term.
Here is a perfect opportunity for Bush and the GOP to call for an “action plan” that would be primarily focussed on reducing the cost of energy for “average working Americans” and make us less dependent on foreighn oil which he could argue has enormous benefits for our national security.
The question is, will Bush and the GOP leadership emulate Chuck Shumer or Ronald Reagan? The answer will largely determine who controls Congress in 06′ and the White House in 08′.
The American people want and deserve decisive bold leadership now Mr. President!!!