Leap Day: Dems' Priorities Don't Include Lowering Gas Prices Or Increasing American Energy Supplies

Downer: Extra Day To Pay Taxes
& More Big Government Spending

Today in Washington, D.C. - Feb 29, 2012 (Leap Day):
The Senate resumed consideration of S. 1813, the highway bill. Tomorrow, the Senate will vote on Sen. Roy Blunt’s (R-MO) amendment that repeal of the administration’s birth-control mandate set to take effect August 1, 2012, and would protect the rights of conscience of religious institutions, preventing them from being forced to pay for things that violate their religious beliefs

Yesterday the House passed (234-69)H R 2117 Protecting Academic Freedom in Higher Education Act.  Today the House will consider HR 1837 San Joaquin River project.

What are the priorities for Democrats these days? Looking at their public statements, lower gas prices for Americans certainly don’t seem to be among them.

Politico reports, “The Energy Department isn’t working to lower gasoline prices directly, Secretary Steven Chu said Tuesday after a Republican lawmaker scolded him for his now-infamous 2008 comment that gas prices in the U.S. should be as high as in Europe. Instead, DOE is working to promote alternatives such as biofuels and electric vehicles, Chu told House appropriators during a hearing on DOE’s budget. But Americans need relief now, Rep. Alan Nunnelee (R-Miss.) said — not high gasoline prices that could eventually push them to alternatives. . . . High gasoline prices will make research into such alternatives more urgent, Chu said. ‘But is the overall goal to get our price’ of gasoline down, asked Nunnelee. ‘No, the overall goal is to decrease our dependency on oil, to build and strengthen our economy,’ Chu replied.”

Recall, of course, that around the time President Obama picked Chu to be Energy Secretary, Chu was saying, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” In major European countries, that price works out to over $8 per gallon at the moment.

Meanwhile, Democrats continue to show no urgency to develop domestic energy supplies. Some, in fact, are busy demanding more energy production comes from Saudi Arabia. According to The Hill, “Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), the third-ranking member of the Senate Democratic leadership, last year pushed Obama to release oil from the [Strategic Petroleum Reserve], but now has taken a different tack. He wants Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to press Saudi Arabia to boost its production in case Iran cuts supply. ‘The SPR is not as good a solution as the Saudi solution, and that’s for a couple of reasons. First, it’s limited,’ he said on CNBC Tuesday. ‘The Saudis and the Gulf states could produce an additional 2.8 million barrels of oil way on into the future. The SPR is somewhat limited. And the SPR works better when there’s an immediate crisis.’”

In other words, President Obama’s Energy Secretary, who previously expressed a desire to “boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” has declared his goal is not to get the price of gas down, and a leading Senate Democrat would prefer more energy production and jobs in Saudi Arabia to more in the United States. Those are pretty amazing priorities for Democrats.

As Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said, “Yesterday, I came to the Senate floor and explained how the President’s ideological outlook and the policies that have grown out of it will only continue to drive up the cost of gasoline at the pump. And after I spoke, the President’s energy secretary seemed to confirm it when he told a congressional panel that the Department of Energy isn’t working to drive down the price of gas; they’re working to wean us off of it altogether — and that high gas prices add urgency to those efforts. In other words, they help.”

He added, “[O]nce again, here are the facts. This President continues to limit offshore areas to energy production and is granting fewer leases on public land for oil drilling. At the same time, he has encouraged other countries, like Brazil, to move forward with their own offshore drilling projects. The Obama administration continues to impose burdensome regulations on the domestic energy sector that will further drive up the cost of gasoline for the consumer. He’s proposed raising taxes on the energy sector, a move that the Congressional Research Service has said would drive up costs. And, as we all know, he flatly rejected the Keystone XL Pipeline — a potentially game-changing domestic energy project that promises not only greater independence from Middle Eastern oil, but tens of thousands of private sector jobs. All these policies help drive up the cost of gasoline and increase our dependence on foreign sources of oil.”

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