Senator Mitch McConnell is fighting to pass the Gas Price Reduction Act, but the Senate Majority Leader refuses to allow the bill to come up for a vote.

From the Bowling Green Daily News:

What in tarnation is the matter with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Democratic leadership in Washington?

Since Reid’s party took control of Congress in 2006 the average price of gas has gone from $2.34 to more than $4 per gallon. Americans are feeling intense pain while fueling their cars and trucks. Farmers and truckers are reeling from high diesel prices.

Closer to home, Kentuckians are now spending about 8 percent of their income on gas - higher than residents of all but eight states - according to data from the Oil Price Information Service.

In Bowling Green, we learned this week that our city’s only cab service has closed its doors, citing the strain of higher fuel prices. A number of their customers were Medicaid patients who used the cab service to visit their doctors.

What is Reid and company’s answer to the No. 1 domestic issue facing our country?

Initially, they got off to a promising start. With Republican support, Congress addressed the conservation side of the energy equation by legislating an increase in fuel efficiency standards for vehicles.

Unfortunately, things spiraled rapidly downhill after that as the Democratic leadership utterly failed to address the supply side.

First, Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi revived the widely discredited windfall profits tax from the Jimmy Carter era. History suggests this misguided legislation actually depressed domestic oil production thereby making us more dependent on foreign sources.

To his credit, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell led the fight to block this very bad idea.

Reid’s latest solution to the pain all Americans are enduring is legislation that focuses narrowly on speculators while not allowing Republican amendments which would include lifting the congressional moratoriums on offshore drilling and exploration of oil share resources in our Western states that would actually address supply issues.

A July 23 article in the New York Times reported that a federal task force after a review of both public and private data concluded that “speculators could not be fairly blamed for rising prices” of oil.

Sen. Reid, your fellow citizens are much smarter than you think.

They know that gas prices are being driven far more by unprecedented worldwide demand than by speculation. You are clearly out of step with the 77 percent of Americans who, polls show, want us to increase domestic production.

McConnell has introduced the Gas Price Reduction Act of 2008, which would lift congressional moratoriums on offshore drilling and oil shale development while addressing conservation considerations by providing increased research and development for advanced batteries for plug-in electric ideas and trucks.

His bill also would authorize increased funding and staffing for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which overseas energy trading. This provision should broaden the appeal of his bill to those like Reid who are now focusing exclusively on speculators.
…