As they do every year, Congress is once again holding showy hearings to bemoan gasoline prices and oil company profits. We are treated to the spectacle of Congress ordering oil company executives to come to Capitol Hill so that politicians can make silly speeches under the guise of a “hearing.” The few questions that are actually asked are so biased and absurd as to hardly be questions at all. And legislators try to explain the impossible - why increasing taxes on oil companies will lead to lower prices for consumers at the pump.
The entire exercise is surreal. How could we possibly find a less intelligent group of people? I have asked high schoolers this simple question - If Congress raises taxes on oil companies, how will it impact the price of gasoline? Every high schooler I asked immediately understood and explained that if the oil companies have to pay more taxes, gasoline will cost more. If high school kids get it, why can’t Congress?
In the past five years, there have been 45 hearings on Capitol Hill about the price of energy. Yet, despite all these high profile hearings, prices at the pump have continued to rise to record highs. So what does that tell us about these hearings? First, show hearings do not do any good. Second, these hearings are cheap political theater designed to give cynical, but lame-brained politicians a chance to give idiotic speeches and deflect attention from the real problem – a problem that is almost entirely of Congress’ making.
Yes, that is right! You are paying almost $4.00 a gallon for gasoline because of politicians in Washington, D.C. And deep down, they know it. That is why they hold these frequent and silly hearings in hopes they can fool Americans into believing that the fault lies elsewhere. But the truth is Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and their cohorts in Congress are to blame.
For more than 30 years, Congress has systematically pursued an energy policy that has insured that energy is scarce and expensive and that we are dependent on foreign oil. We have tremendous oil resources that we do not use - in the outer continental shelf and in the frozen tundra of Alaska, just to name two of the many possibilities.
The real kicker is that off the coast of Florida where it is illegal for us to drill, the Cubans will soon drill with the help of the communist Chinese. Can anyone say, “environmental disaster?” It will also be an economic disaster. Others will get the oil and the profits and when they spill the oil, it will wash up on our shores for us to clean up. That’s what Congress’ policy has given us!
In the frozen tundra of Alaska, Congress refuses to permit drilling. Back in the late 1990s, the Republican Congress passed legislation to permit drilling, but President Clinton vetoed it – in part because it would take 5 to 7 years for that new energy to be developed. Yet, that was about 10 years ago, so had we proceeded then, we could have enjoyed the new source of energy for the last 3 to 5 years. They also claimed that drilling would ruin the environment and that it would not generate enough oil to make a difference. They were wrong on both counts.
In the late 1970’s, President Carter and the Democratically controlled Congress created the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and set aside a small area specifically for oil and gas exploration. Alaska is a state of 365 million acres. ANWR is almost 20 million acres – the size of the state of South Carolina. The proposed drilling site in ANWR is less than 2000 acres - less than one-hundredth of one percent of ANWR. If Alaska were the size of a football field, the drilling site in ANWR would be about the size of a postage stamp. Put another way, if Alaska were a two-hour movie, the drilling site would be less than four one-hundredths of a second - literally the blink of an eye.
Experts estimate that ANWR contains up to 16 billion barrels of oil. It would take the United States 30 years at our current import levels to buy that much oil from Saudi Arabia. ANWR alone could produce 10% of our daily oil needs.
But rather than dealing with real solutions, politicians in Washington hold show hearings in hopes of distracting us from the fact that they are the problem. Every time we fill up our gas tanks, we must remember that Congress is to blame for our current dilemma and we must tell them that we are on to them.
