The Rasmussen Reports latest congressional approval tracking data has shown that paltry 9% of Americans believe that Congress is doing a good job. A closer exploration of the numbers reveals that the Democrat controlled Congress is getting abysmal marks not just among Republican voters and independents, but also among their own party loyalists. A mere 13% of those identifying themselves as registered Democrats are willing to give the Congress high marks. The Democratic Party leadership will surely attempt to shift the blame upon the Republican minority or the President, but a cursory examination of their legislative accomplishments sheds the light of truth on the real reasoning behind the historic congressional dissatisfaction.

While Congress has passed a few pieces of legislation that have made headlines this year, they have become increasingly belligerent on even attempting anything of substance on the climbing price of oil. The American voting public is most concerned about the high cost of energy. Poll after poll has shown that the citizenry are demanding that something be done to curb the rapid increase in energy costs. While virtually every credible expert on energy has pointed to the ever-increasing demand for oil from countries like China and India, congressional leadership has chosen to play partisan politics as usual. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that there is no shortage of oil and that drilling for oil will not solve anything. Yet she proposed releasing the equivalent of 3.5 days worth of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. If drilling off our own oil will not solve anything, how will sending 3.5 days worth of oil on to the market solve anything? Pelosi is gambling that the vast majority of the public will hear her sound byte on the evening news and discount that the price at the pump never changes. 

Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington, alluded to the fact that the Democratic leadership would like to use the current high price of gas to move us away from the use of oil. The Democratic Party has decided that the high price of gas is good for us as a country because we will drive less and push for alternative energy sources. The problem with this logic is that the alternative sources are not viable right now. They claim that even if they allowed us to drill in ANWR and offshore we would not see that oil for at least 5 years. At least we would be drilling for our own oil and not be held hostage to the whims of some third world dictator. We would be increasing the supply to meet the increasing demand. 

We need to be working on alternative energy sources, such as wind and solar, but we also need to be building more nuclear power plants to meet our own demands. We need to be building new refineries in our own country. It makes virtually no sense that there has been no refinery built in the United States for the past 30 years. It makes no sense that we do not tap into our own wealth of oil in our own country, when we are importing more than 70% of our oil. We have, by some estimates, as much or more oil within our own country than in all of the Middle East. Is it any wonder why we have $4 a gallon gas? The opponents scream about the potential for accidents and the potential damage to the environment, but how much oil spilled in the Gulf of Mexico when Katrina blew into Louisiana and Mississippi? After the worst hurricane in history to land in the Gulf States, there was not one drop of oil spilled due the devastating storm.  

A few months ago, Senator John McCain proposed a summer hiatus from federal gas taxes, which is currently about 18 cents a gallon. Most in Congress called it pointless because it would not affect the price at the pump significantly. This week a congressional commission, the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission, released their recommendations to Congress. Included in their recommendations is a 40 cent a gallon increase in the federal gas tax to help pay for our bridges and highways. Does anyone actually believe that the increase in taxes will ever make it to the bridges and highways? Did the tobacco lawsuit money ever make it to help those afflicted by smoking? While most on the panel do not believe that this will ever come to fruition, it is just another example of why the public does not approve of the job that Congress is doing.

In the run up to the 2006 mid term elections, the Democratic leadership announced that they had sweeping plans that would ease the burden of high fuel costs. The average price of a gallon of gas at the time was more than a dollar less than what it is now.   Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and her leadership in the House have yet to introduce one piece of legislation to help bring the price at the pump down to a less painful level. They have done a lot of posturing in front of the cameras as they hold hearings with oil company executives. They have accused the CEOs of Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, Valero, BPAmerica, and others of purposely manipulating the price of gas to reap the huge profits that they have made over the past few years. Lost in all the pontificating from Congress is the fact that although these companies are huge in the Unites States, the massive nationalized companies of the rest of the world dwarf them.

This week, President Bush called on Congress to open up 2000 acres in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge, better known as ANWR, the outer continental shelf, and allow the exploration and retrieval of oil shale. The estimates of oil reserves in ANWR and the outer continental shelf are about 28 billion barrels of oil. That is more than double the current 21 billion barrels that we have currently. Oil shale is a type of sedimentary rock that through refining processes can produce oil. There are over 800 billion barrels of oil shale in the United States. By comparison, that is more than 4 times all of the oil in Saudi Arabia. The process of extracting the oil from the oil shale is expensive and until the price of oil rose above roughly $80 a barrel it was not economically feasible for the oil companies to go after it. Now is the time for that oil to be retrieved. If the Democrats on Capitol Hill truly are concerned about the high cost of a gallon of gas, they will seriously consider taking action on the President’s proposals. Sadly, the Democratic Party, the “party of change”, are stuck living with a 1970’s mindset on energy.

The Democrats response was the same response that we have heard for the past several years. “It will take 10 years for us to see any oil from ANWR or the outer continental shelf.” That response is pure political posturing, especially when you realize that 13 years ago President Clinton vetoed legislation that would have allowed drilling in ANWR. It has been a few years since I sat in any type of Math class, but I do believe 13 years is more than 10 years. Besides, aren’t the same people making the argument that we need to do something now on “global warming”? Shouldn’t we then do something now for our future energy needs? They also claim that the “small” amounts of oil that drilling in ANWR and off the coast would produce would have little effect on the price of oil. I find it amazing that these same politicians were calling on the President to convince Saudi Arabia to produce more oil. They then cheered when the Saudis announced to produce 500,000 more barrels a day, when just the first 2 proposals would produce around 1 million barrels a day.

I must admit that the Democrats have proposed a few plans on energy that I believe would have the effect of raising the price of oil instead of lowering it. They have proposed a “Windfall Profits Tax” on the oil companies as a way to punish them for making a profit. The end result would be to raise the price at the pump. The oil companies are in business to make a profit. They will either pass the cost of the tax on to the consumers or move more of their business overseas to escape the tax. Either way, we pay more. They have also suggested that the government take over control of the oil companies. Representative Maurice Hinchey, a New York Democrat, called for the government to take over the oil refineries on Wednesday. California’s Maxine Waters admitted that she would like to see the government take over the oil industry to better regulate the price of gas. The Democrats are in good company. Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, and virtually every other Middle Eastern country have a government controlled oil industry. If government control is the answer to every problem in our lives than why do we have a social security mess? How well did the Katrina aftermath go with a government run agency? How many government programs are actually run efficiently? Why should we expect the government to be able to run an industry that they know absolutely nothing about? This is just one more piece of evidence of where the Democratic leadership wants to take our country. To Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama socialism is the goal and capitalism and the free market is the enemy.