Speaker Nancy Pelosi opposes off-shore drilling, and she wants to move America off fossil fuels by switching to natural gas. But there are a couple major problems with her proposal: 1) you have to drill for natural gas, and 2) natural gas IS a fossil fuel.
Nancy Pelosi recently diluted her opposition to offshore drilling, but we're beginning to wonder if the House Speaker even knows why she opposed increasing domestic energy supplies in the first place.
Ms. Pelosi appeared Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," where Tom Brokaw gently pointed out that the various Democratic alternative energy ambitions are "not going to happen overnight." Replied Ms. Pelosi: "You can have a transition with natural gas. That, that is cheap, abundant and clean compared to fossil fuels." Later, she again said that "I believe in natural gas as a clean, cheap alternative to fossil fuels," and that wind, solar, biofuels and "a focus on natural gas, these are the real alternatives."
Apparently Ms. Pelosi's new script is still being reworked, but it's a telling mistake. Not only is natural gas every bit as much a "fossil fuel" as oil or coal. More to the point, these concentrated organic compounds found beneath the earth's surface must be extracted by . . . drilling. And sometimes even drilling offshore, on the Outer Continental Shelf. But more drilling is what Ms. Pelosi had refused to allow just a few days ago.
Senator Mitch McConnell traveled to Murray on Friday. Senator McConnell spoke to the Murray-Calloway County Economic Development Corporation, and participated in the groundbreaking for a new industrial park. The Murray Ledger & Times wrote two articles about his visit.
While some herald the high costs as a way to get people out of their vehicles and utilizing public transportation, McConnell said the fact is that for most Americans “the automobile is indispensable.”
The law of supply and demand is one reason, McConnell said that gas prices have sky rocketed. With countries like India and China making modern day progress, the demand for fuel has increased.
In 2007, 87 million barrels of oil were used daily across the world; 21 billion were used in the United States with 12 being imported and nine produced.
McConnell's proposed solution is to find more and use less.
“We need to do absolutely everything,” he said. “There is a realistic way to cut oil imports in half.”
Finding one-third more U.S. oil is on McConnell's agenda.
“We are the only country in the world that locks up so much potential supply,” he told the gathering at Murray Country Club. McConnell added that there is enough oil shale in three western states to triple the oil reserves in Saudi Arabia.
The second component of McConnell's proposal was to use one-third less imports. “We are not too far away from the time all of us will be plugging in our cars and trucks at night,” he said. “Battery driven cars are not that far away.”
One of the reasons why McConnell believes battery powered cars are in the near future is because “the delivery system of plug-in cars is already there.”
U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell covered topics overseas and a little closer to home when he visited the Murray Ledger & Times Friday.
McConnell, R-Ky., was in town to address the annual awards luncheon for the Murray-Calloway County Economic Development Corporation (see related story) and participate in a groundbreaking ceremony on the site of the new industrial park west of Murray-Calloway's current industrial park on U.S. 641 North.
…[He] stressed the role his length of service has played in delivering money and projects to Kentucky; two of which he has brought to Calloway County this year in the form of $2 million for the new industrial park land and $1.2 million for Murray-Calloway Transit Authority.
“The fundamental argument is in what way would Kentucky be better off trading in the second person in the state who's been in a position to be party leader (other was former Senator and Vice-President Alben Barkley) for a freshman senator?” McConnell asked.
It took a few months, and more than a few polls, but Democrats have concluded that they've lost the debate against more oil-and-gas drilling. The surrender became official on Saturday, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that even she was ready to "consider opening portions" of the Outer Continental Shelf to oil exploration.
That's great news, assuming she and her fellow Democrats really mean it. It wasn't too many days ago that the anticarbon Speaker lampooned drilling as "a hoax on the American people," while Barack Obama called it "another Washington gimmick." Now the Democratic Presidential candidate has also said he might be willing to change his mind and tolerate the exploitation of domestic energy resources.
Interestingly Bruce Lunsford and Nancy Pelosi seem to be sharing the same talking points on energy. Both Pelosi and Lunsford have called Senator McConnell’s energy plan “a hoax.”
Senator Mitch McConnell continues fighting for a vote on his energy plan, the Gas Price Reduction Act. You can encourage Congress to take action by signing the petition today.
Many campaigns hold “house parties,” where volunteers invite friends and neighbors over in support of a candidate.
House parties are usually about SUPPORTING a candidate running for office. But for Bruce Lunsford, even the house parties are negative. In an email dispatched yesterday, Lunsford says his supporters can “help defeat Mitch McConnell by hosting a house party.”
Herald-Leader reporter Ryan Alessi wrote about this very trend in the Lunsford campaign, finding that the feeling amongst Democrats is more anti-McConnell than pro-Lunsford.
Does anyone actually support Bruce Lunsford on his own merits? Or is his campaign all about attacking the other guy?
In the meantime, we are waiting on partisan Democrats to put out those thousands of negative yard signs unveiled at Fancy Farm. Maybe they can’t find anyone to put up signs that are pro-Lunsford.
In making their case against expanding energy exploration offshore, Bruce Lunsford and Barack Obama frequently claim that we don’t have enough oil reserves in the U.S. to make a difference. What they don’t tell you is that we really don’t know the exact quantity of our reserves, and if Barack Obama has his way we’ll never know. Obama has introduced a bill that would make it even more difficult to estimate offshore oil reserves.
Federal officials currently employ estimates based primarily on two-dimensional maps that oil-industry surveyors produced in the 1970s and furnished to the Interior Department. Since 1981, Congressional appropriations amendments effectively have barred Interior from financing or permitting survey expeditions.
…Obama's "Oil SENSE Act" would repeal the 2005 Energy Policy Act's authorization of these inventories. S.115 would leave decision makers with Carter administration maps drawn with pre-PC technology. This is like engineering a Space Shuttle mission with slide rules.
Obama's bill would prohibit expanded use of 3-D seismic techniques that locate and measure underwater oil deposits. In October 1999, President Clinton's Energy Department evaluated the environmental quality of 1970s' 2-D equipment against last decade's 3-D technology. With the latter, Energy concluded, "Overall impacts of exploration and production are reduced because fewer wells are required to develop the same amount of reserves." In 1970, 17 percent of offshore wells struck oil. By 1997, that figure was 48 percent.
Contemporary 4-D surveying adds the dimension of time. Satellites help find and quantify sub sea deposits, track their flows, and predict their next steps. Some 70 percent of 4-D wells hit oil.
Obama's Don't Ask, Don't Drill policy spurns these marvels and embraces outdated information gathered with obsolete instruments. This is the audacity of ignorance.
Adults should not make decisions in willful oblivion. Democrats like Obama prefer not to know what riches rest off America's coasts. They resemble kindergartners who cover their ears and hum loudly to muffle their parents' unwelcome words.
Meanwhile, Americans struggle to fuel planes, trains, and automobiles. Despite this national nightmare, congressional Democrats fled on a five-week summer vacation, rather than vote on Republican amendments to extend offshore drilling. Democrats chose suntan oil over oil production.
… Across the Capitol, as Human Events' Jed Babbin observed, Senate Democrats favored doubling gasoline prices to considering further fuel development. Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, asked to debate pro-energy legislation. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., representing majority Democrats, objected. And if gasoline reached $5 per gallon? Salazar said no. $7.50? McConnell wondered. Salazar: Not yet. McConnell continued, "I would renew my request with the modification that the trigger be $10 a gallon at the pump." Salazar replied: "I object." …
The Wall Street Journal published a must-read editorial about liberals and environmentalists blocking renewable energy production. It seems the party whose energy plan is to “drive small cars and wait for the wind,” doesn’t want to build the power grid necessary for wind and solar energy farms.
In this year's great energy debate, Democrats describe a future when the U.S. finally embraces the anything-but-carbon avant-garde. It turns out, however, that when wind and solar power do start to come on line, they face a familiar obstacle: environmentalists and many Democrats.
…
Only last week, Duke Energy and American Electric Power announced a $1 billion joint venture to build a mere 240 miles of transmission line in Indiana necessary to accommodate new wind farms. Yet the utilities don't expect to be able to complete the lines for six long years -- until 2014, at the earliest, because of the time necessary to obtain regulatory approval and rights-of-way, plus the obligatory lawsuits.
In California, hundreds turned out at the end of July to protest a connection between the solar and geothermal fields of the Imperial Valley to Los Angeles and Orange County. The environmental class is likewise lobbying state commissioners to kill a 150-mile link between San Diego and solar panels because it would entail a 20-mile jaunt through Anza-Borrego state park. "It's kind of schizophrenic behavior," Arnold Schwarzenegger said recently. "They say that we want renewable energy, but we don't want you to put it anywhere."
California has a law mandating that utilities generate 20% of their electricity from "clean-tech" by 2010. Some 24 states have adopted a "renewable portfolio standard," while Barack Obama wants to impose a national renewable mandate. But the states, with the exception of Texas, didn't make transmission lines easier to build, though it won't prevent them from penalizing the power companies that fail to meet an impossible goal.
Texas is now the wind capital of America (though wind still generates only 3% of state electricity) because it streamlined the regulatory and legal snarls that block transmission in other states. By contrast, though Pennsylvania's Democratic Governor Ed Rendell adopted wind power as a main political plank, he and Senator Bob Casey are leading a charge to repeal a 2005 law that makes transmission lines slightly easier to build.
Wind power has also become contentious in oh-so-green Oregon, once people realized that transmission lines would cut through forests. Transmissions lines from a wind project on the Nevada-Idaho border are clogged because of possible effects on the greater sage grouse. Similar melodramas are playing out in Arizona, the Dakotas, the Carolinas, Tennessee, West Virginia, northern Maine, upstate New York, and elsewhere.
In other words, the liberal push for alternatives has the look of a huge bait-and-switch. Washington responds to the climate change panic with multibillion-dollar taxpayer subsidies for supposedly clean tech. But then when those incentives start to have an effect in the real world, the same greens who favor the subsidies say build the turbines or towers somewhere else. The only energy sources they seem to like are the ones we don't have.
Lunsford Reiterates That He Would Vote for Higher Taxes on Domestic Oil Production; Does Not Dispute That His Energy Plan Would Not Open One New Acre to Offshore Drilling
Roll Call 339, 11/17/2005 – Senator McConnell opposed a windfall profits tax. Lunsford would have voted with Barack Obama and John Kerry in favor of it.
Roll call 222, 6/21/2007 – Senator McConnell voted for an amendment saying we should not increase taxes on domestic oil production unless it is certified that the tax increases would not raise prices at the pump or make us more dependent on foreign oil. Lunsford would have voted with Barack Obama and John Kerry against this commonsense measure.
Roll Call 223, 6/21/2007 – Senator McConnell opposed legislation that would increase taxes on domestic oil production. Lunsford would have voted with Barack Obama and John Kerry in favor.
Roll Call 146, 6/10/2008 – Senator McConnell opposed a windfall profits tax. Lunsford would have voted with Barack Obama and John Kerry in favor.
Lunsford’s new ad relies on misguided editorials by newspapers supportive of Lunsford’s higher energy taxes. Interestingly, nowhere in Lunsford’s ads does he 1) dispute that he bragged about creating automatic gas tax increases in Kentucky, or 2) dispute that his energy plan would not open one new acre to offshore drilling.
WLKY covers Senator Mitch McConnell’s speech to the Danville Rotary Club. Senator McConnell discussed his energy plan and the Gas Price Reduction Act.
Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell said his energy plan would cut oil imports into the United States in half over time.
The four-term senator promoted his proposal to encourage more energy production and more conservation in a speech to the Danville Rotary Club on Friday.
Energy issues have been at the forefront of McConnell’s race against Democratic challenger Bruce Lunsford, a Louisville businessman.
Noting the November election, McConnell said Kentucky would lose considerable influence in Washington if he were replaced by someone with no seniority in the Senate. …
Republican Senator Mitch McConnell was the guest speaker during the Morehead-Rowan County Chamber of Commerce luncheon last Thursday.
McConnell hit on some key issues for this year’s election. Those topics included the high gas prices and healthcare. He shared his plan for resolving the gas issue.
“The solution is to find more oil and use less. A reason for the high gas prices is there is high demand for oil,” he said. “ This caused the price per barrel to go up. Our plan will cut oil imports in half. We will be going from drilling 12 million to 6 million barrels a day.
“We need to find 3 million more barrels of oil per day. Eighty-five percent of our oil is located in the Continental Shelf and it is off limits. The reason why that reserve is forbidden is it’s considered to be an environmental issue and America is not the only country to operate this way,” McConnell said.
“Drilling on American soil would reduce the demand for oil,” he said. “The strength of the dollar depends on the price of oil. If the price of oil is high, the strength of the dollar is weakened.”
He touched on the issue of electric operated vehicles and how they can be an answer to the fuel crisis.
“Plug in cars and trucks are not in the too distant future,” McConnell said. “Soon we will be plugging in our cars and trucks in our garages because the delivery system is already in place.”
The issue of healthcare was brought up during a question and answer segment of the meeting. The question that was presented: What was to be done about the overwhelming healthcare problem? McConnell spoke of Great Britain and how their healthcare is free but their plan has its flaws.
“We have 40 million people who are uninsured. It is not to say that everyone is not cared for,” he said. “ Many are cared for and cannot pay the bill. That bill does not go unpaid because it falls to the rest of us. We can all agree that is not good.
“The question is how do we get them covered? We need to tackle the problem of the uninsured,” he said. “I know if you ask any physician or hospital administrator, that the cost of litigating is being passed to us.”
If Bruce Lunsford were to arrive at his next cocktail party with bib overalls over his tuxedo it would be no stranger than his attempts to portray himself as a populist in his campaign for the U.S. Senate.
When the Democratic challenger to Sen. Mitch McConnell called the Senate minority leader “Multi-millionaire Mitch” at the Fancy Farm picnic, it must have made even his most ardent supporters wince. The fabulously wealthy Lunsford is the Democratic nominee only because he is self funded — the national party would not invest limited resources in such a long-shot race — and the only other self-funded candidate in the crowded primary was profoundly unqualified.
Lunsford is blasting American oil companies, an easy target with gas near $4 a gallon. Taking a cue from Barack Obama, he supports a windfall profits tax — which he defines as “unexpected profits” — on oil companies. But acknowledging that those profits are unexpected does not prevent him from implying that the high prices at the pump are the result of collusion on the part of Big Oil — with, naturally, the complicity of Mitch McConnell.
Big Oil does not set oil prices, but oil companies do indeed benefit when prices go up. That, Lunsford believes, is unacceptable. He thinks Congress should decide when an American company makes too much money and confiscate profits it considers excessive.
What does Lunsford intend to do about the foreign governments — two-thirds of our oil is imported — who are also enjoying “windfall” profits from American oil consumption? Answer: Give them a competitive advantage by making it more costly for American companies to reinvest profits in exploration and refining.
And that’s only the half of it. The candidate wants to make it doubly difficult for Big Oil to increase domestic production. His eight-point plan for energy independence does not include drilling at ANWR and along the Outer Continental Shelf, where vast oil reserves are known to exist. Yet the plan does include coercing oil companies to drill on land and offshore sites currently leased for drilling but where oil companies have determined no significant quantities of recoverable oil exist. He states, “ ... these areas are undeveloped because drilling there would not yield high enough profits to maintain oil companies’ record earnings.”
Pause to catch your breath, dear reader; a statement so stupid surely took your breath away. Lunsford, who clearly knows better after his successful business career, would force oil companies to make manifestly unsound business decisions.
Lunsford calls McConnell unfair for placing part of the blame for high gas prices on Lunsford himself, then defends his role in doing just that. As a member of the Gov. John Y. Brown administration, Lunsford lobbied for automatic increases in the state fuel tax. The most recent increase, pushing the state gasoline tax to just over 21 cents per gallon, was quietly added to the price at the pump this summer.
Lunsford boasted, “We changed the way we tax gas in the state to give us a budget that could grow.”
That’s the justification — ensuring a budget that can grow? We’ll take comfort contemplating that fact next time we fill up.
Ironically, Lunsford’s plan calls for a holiday from the federal gas tax, which stands at 18 cents a gallon. Apparently 18 cents is too much tax, but 21 cents is not.
The true comprehensive plan for energy independence is the one McConnell champions day after day in the Senate chamber. It includes, like Lunsford’s plan, clean-coal technology, lifting the ban on developing vast shale oil deposits and alternative/renewable forms of energy. But unlike Lunsford, McConnell also calls for increasing nuclear power, the cleanest, most economical source of energy. And he calls for lifting the ban on offshore drilling and tapping ANWR’s vast reserves of recoverable oil.
Unfortunately, Majority Leader Harry Reid thwarts every serious attempt to decrease American dependence on foreign oil. Increasing domestic supply is anathema to Democrats in Congress, who are under the thumb of the environmental lobby.
Multi-millionaire Bruce is disguised as a regular Joe. He’s apparently intimidated by Kentucky’s two largest newspapers, with their reliably liberal editorial pages, hoping they won’t pick on him for being rich as long as he rails against others in his tax bracket. It’s an unbecoming role for Lunsford.
Senator Mitch McConnell is fighting to pass the Gas Price Reduction Act. The Act would help solve America’s energy crisis by applying the principle, “find more, use less.” Senator McConnell’s bill opens the door to increased domestic energy exploration, and supports efforts to increase energy conservation.
Washington Democrats oppose these common-sense efforts to both increase energy production and decrease consumption. Senator McConnell is leading the call to do both, find more and use less.
Democrats have the advantage on just about every domestic issue from health care to education. However, Americans' greatest concern is the economy, and their greatest economic concern is energy (by a significant margin: 37 percent to 21 percent for inflation). Yet Democrats have gratuitously forfeited the issue of increased drilling for domestic oil and gas. By an overwhelming margin of 2 to 1, Americans want to lift the moratorium preventing drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf, thus unlocking vast energy resources shut down for the past 27 years.
Democrats have been adamantly opposed. They say that we cannot drill our way out of the oil crisis. Of course not. But it is equally obvious that we cannot solar or wind or biomass our way out. Does this mean that because any one measure cannot solve a problem, it needs to be rejected?
Barack Obama remains opposed to new offshore drilling (although he now says he would accept a highly restricted version as part of a comprehensive package). Just last week, he claimed that if only Americans would inflate their tires properly and get regular tuneups, "we could save all the oil that they're talking about getting off drilling."
This is bizarre. By any reasonable calculation of annual tire-inflation and tuneup savings, the Outer Continental Shelf holds nearly a hundred times as much oil. As for oil shale, also under federal moratorium, after a thousand years of driving with Obama-inflated tires and Obama-tuned engines, we would still have saved an amount equal to only one-fifth the oil shale available in the United States.
But forget the math. Why is this issue either/or? Who's against properly inflated tires? Let's start a national campaign, Cuban-style, with giant venceremos posters lining the highways. ("Inflate your tires. Victory or death!") Why must there be a choice between encouraging conservation and increasing supply? The logical answer is obvious: Do both.
… The problem for the Democrats is that the argument for "do everything" is not rocket science. It is common sense. Which is why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, surveying the political rubble resulting from her insistence on not even permitting drilling to come to a floor vote, has quietly told her members that they can save their skins and vote for drilling when the pre-election Congress convenes next month. Pelosi says she wants to save the planet. Apparently saving her speakership comes first.
Senator Mitch McConnell traveled to Owensboro on Thursday for the Chamber of Commerce’s Rooster Breakfast. Read this report on the event from the Messenger-Inquirer.
Discussion of energy -- producing more and using less -- dominated U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell's speech to the Greater Owensboro Chamber of Commerce's Rooster Booster breakfast Thursday morning.
That message could have been taken straight from the results of a poll conducted Wednesday by the national polling firm Rasmussen Reports that showed 81 percent of likely voters believe there is an urgent need to find new energy and 67 percent see the same urgency in reducing consumption.
"The solution is to find more and to use less," McConnell told the crowd at the RiverPark Center. "There is no one way to get on top of this problem."
McConnell, who is facing re-election this year, took the opportunity to make a pitch for his return to Washington next January by reminding residents how much money he has secured for the state.
He cited a recent magazine article that showed that U.S. Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania was the most effective freshman lawmaker in delivering dollars to his home state with $16 million in the last year.
By comparison, McConnell said he brought in $500 million for Kentucky in the last year, which he said speaks to the clout he has been able to garner while in office.
"There would be a massive loss of influence and clout were you to trade me in for a freshman Democrat," McConnell said.
… As has been the case with many Republican lawmakers since Congress adjourned last Friday for a five-week recess, McConnell hammered Democratic leaders over the proposal in the U.S. House to expand offshore oil drilling that has not been taken to a vote. McConnell estimated that expanding oil production through more drilling and conversion of oil shale could increase domestic supplies by 3 million barrels a day and conservation measures would eventually decrease demand by 4 million barrels a day.
Those two fronts would have an impact on the 21 million barrels of oil currently being consumed in the United States, 12 million of which come from outside the country, McConnell said. …
CNBC’s Larry Kudlow writes about the work of Senator Mitch McConnell and other Republicans who want to increase domestic energy production.
While Republicans on the House floor shouted “vote, vote, vote” and “lower gas prices,” the Democratic majority turned off the lights, cameras, and microphones. Determined Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell offered unanimous-consent requests to vote on lifting the ban on deep-water exploration, and the Democrats objected. When McConnell asked Democrats if they’d overturn the ban at $4.50 a gallon, they replied “no.” When he raised the price to $5, $7, and $10, they cried “no,” “no,” and “no.”
On the Stephanopoulos Sunday news show, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi underscored her refusal to allow a drilling vote. Asked about the Republican rebellion in the House, she said, “What you saw in the Congress this week was the war dance of the handmaidens of the oil companies.” She went on to say, “We are spending all of this time on a parliamentary tactic, when nothing less is at stake than the planet, the air we breathe, our children breathe.”
Oh really? Voters have a much different view. Polls suggest that two-thirds to three-quarters of the nation wants to drill. To wit, while a just-released Obama campaign ad attacks McCain as a tool of big oil, McCain has taken his first-ever lead in a Rasmussen tracking poll.
There is a voter revolt going on, and it reminds me of the anti-tax rebellion that lifted Ronald Reagan into office twenty-eight years ago. Is the conventional wisdom about to be swept away? As Republicans press home the drill, drill, drill message, might they pick up seats in Congress this year? And might the national clamor for a more realistic and balanced energy policy — one that includes more oil, natural gas, clean coal, nuclear, and the alternatives of wind, solar, and cellulosic — carry John McCain to a convincing victory over Obama?
Without even realizing it, the GOP drilling offensive has become a new contract with America. And it appears to be working. The public is putting aside global warming and choosing instead new-energy production, a stronger economy, and more job creation. Voters want growth, not austerity. They want Ronald Reagan, not Thomas Malthus. And by resisting this grassroots call, the Democratic party is digging itself into one of the biggest political dry holes in history. …
After bragging about giving Kentucky an automatic gas tax increase to “grow” Kentucky’s state budget, Bruce Lunsford has finally admitted that the difference in price caused by his tax scheme is a burden that makes a “huge difference” to consumers.
During a recent campaign stop, Lunsford talked about a gas station he visited where the owner had priced his gasoline six-cents lower than the local competition to “take care of the regular customers.”
Lunsford said: “That six cents made a huge difference for them.”
Check out the video below.
According to the Courier-Journal: “Lunsford, as Brown's chief legislative liaison, did push for a change in the gas tax formula. At the time the tax was 9 cents a gallon; since then the price of gas has more than tripled, with the tax rising to 21.1 cents per gallon.” That’s an increase of 12.1 cents per gallon, twice the Lunsford threshold of what constitutes a “huge difference.”
“If six-cents makes a ‘huge difference,’ then Lunsford is finally admitting his automatic gas tax increases are hurting Kentucky families,” said McConnell campaign manager Justin Brasell. “I was surprised when he bragged about raising taxes in the first place. This is not someone Kentuckians want representing them in the U.S. Senate,” Brasell said.
Even Courier-Journal columnist David Hawpe was forced to admit over the weekend that because of Bruce Lunsford’s work, Kentucky’s gas tax has gone up 134-percent!
“Lunsford’s record on gas taxes is clear and consistent. He still supports higher gas taxes, he admits that when they go up families feel the pain, and he does not care what these taxes do to the cost of gas at the pump,” Brasell said.
“At a time of record high gas prices, Kentuckians are undoubtedly going to reject Bruce Lunsford’s tax-raising ambitions and return Mitch McConnell to the U.S. Senate in November,” Brasell said.
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.
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. …
The following op-ed, written by Senator Mitch McConnell, appeared in Sunday's Courier-Journal.
The Courier-Journal editorial board believes Kentuckians ought to pay higher gasoline taxes. You've held that position for a long time, and aggressively promote it every chance you get. And on this issue, you're in total agreement with my opponent.
I believe differently. I'm convinced Kentuckians don't want their taxes to increase, especially at a time of record high gas prices. Talk about adding insult to injury.
There's a better way. I have a plan to help solve this energy crisis, bring down the price at the pump and reduce our dependence on Middle East oil.
The answer is simple: We need to find more energy and use less. This will take a three-pronged approach of greater energy exploration, new technological innovation and more conservation.
America is the third-largest oil-producing country in the world behind Saudi Arabia and Russia. Yet, you would never know it by the extreme restrictions placed on energy exploration here at home. With gas prices topping $4 a gallon, the majority of Americans believe we need to unlock more of our own natural resources to help lower them.
We should allow responsible energy exploration off the Outer Continental Shelf, at least 50 miles from the coast, where states choose to do so. After all, the offshore areas off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts contain more oil than total U.S. imports from all Persian Gulf countries over the last 15 years combined -- yet 85 percent of this area is currently off limits.
We should also scrap an ill-conceived moratorium on developing oil shale in our Western states, which could yield three times the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia.
Innovation to develop new sources of energy is important, too. That's why I support greater federal funding for research and development for plug-in electric cars and trucks, and clean-coal technology, a resource Kentucky has in abundance. Finally, we need greater conservation efforts, which is why I supported the first increase in fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks in three decades.
Taken as a whole, these proposals can win bipartisan support in Congress and be signed into law. Kentuckians deserve no less from their elected officials. I intend to keep working in the Senate to pass this much-needed legislation so we can lower the price of gas and reduce our reliance on Middle East oil.
Senator Mitch McConnell continues fighting to pass the Gas Price Reduction Act. The Senate Majority Leader is trying to block the Senate from considering the bill. From today’s Wall Street Journal:
There are indications Republicans' support for increased domestic oil production is gaining traction on the campaign trail and in Congress. In the poll, Democrats' advantage on energy -- the issue voters in the poll said was their No. 1 economic concern -- had shrunk to 20 points in July from 28 points in January. The telephone poll of 1,003 registered voters has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points; the question on party advantage was from a half-sample, with margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.
… The stakes have become increasingly apparent in a bruising debate on Capitol Hill in recent weeks. This week, Republicans in the Senate plan to use parliamentary tactics to keep floor debate alive on the issue.
"This issue is washing over the Democrats," Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said last week. "They're scrambling like crazy to try to figure out how to avoid it."
… Republicans in the spring began to coalesce around the strategy of urging higher domestic oil production. For their part, Democrats have considered a range of alternatives, including a windfall-profits tax on oil companies, a crackdown on price gouging and tighter curbs on oil-market speculation. None so far has made much headway amid Republican opposition.
In a possible sign of the Democrats' troubles, the Sierra Club plans to run radio ads this week urging six Democrats to keep supporting legislation targeting the oil companies. The lawmakers have been under pressure from conservative groups to support offshore oil drilling.
Bruce Lunsford is airing a television ad in which he endorses measures that would further increase the cost of gasoline. Saying that Senator McConnell voted “to give them [oil companies] billions in tax breaks,” Lunsford cites four votes:
Roll Call # 339, 11/17/2005 – This amendment to the Tax Relief Act of 2005 would have created a $3 billion windfall profits tax. Senator McConnell opposes windfall profits taxes, because the costs would be passed on to consumers who already pay too much at the pump.
Roll Call # 222, 6/21/2007 – Senator McConnell voted in favor of an amendment stating that tax increases on oil companies would not go into effect unless the Department of Energy certified that 1) the tax increases would not result in an increase in retail prices for gasoline and 2) that the increased taxes would not result in making the U.S. more dependent on foreign oil.
Roll Call #223, 6/21/2007 – This was a vote on cloture on the tax title of the Democrats’ energy bill. Senator McConnell opposed cloture, because the measure would have increased taxes by $28 billion and led to higher gasoline prices. One of the tax increases in this measure would have applied a 13% excise tax on oil produced in the Gulf of Mexico – making the U.S. even more dependent on Middle Eastern oil.
Roll Call #146, 6/10/2006 – Senator McConnell voted against cloture on the motion to proceed to Senator Harry Reid’s energy bill, which included billions in increased taxes in the form of a windfall profits tax that would’ve resulted in increased prices for consumers.
Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and other liberal leaders on Capitol Hill are gripped by cold-sweat terror. If they permit a vote on offshore drilling, they know they will lose when Blue Dogs and oil-patch Democrats defect to the GOP position of increasing domestic energy production. So the last failsafe is to shut down Congress.
Majority Leader Reid has decided that deliberation is too taxing for "the world's greatest deliberative body." This week he cut off serious energy amendments to his antispeculation bill. Then Senate Appropriations baron Robert Byrd abruptly canceled a bill markup planned for today where Republicans intended to press the issue. Mr. Byrd's counterpart in the House, David Obey, is enforcing a similar lockdown. Speaker Pelosi says she won't allow even a debate before Congress's August recess begins in eight days.
Senator Mitch McConnell won’t give up on this important issue. He is fighting for a vote on the Gas Price Reduction Act, which would increase domestic energy exploration. You can help by signing the petition today.
