WH Plan Is "Say Anything, But Do Nothing"

Today in Washington, D.C. - April 18, 2012
Yesterday, the Senate voted 74-22 to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to S. 1789, the postal reform bill. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) filled the amendment tree on the postal reform bill, thus blocking amendments, and filed for cloture (to cut off debate) on both the substitute amendment from Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Susan Collins (R-ME) and on the underlying bill. If no unanimous consent agreement on amendments to the postal reform bill is reached, there will be a cloture vote on the bill tomorrow morning.

The Senate resumed consideration of the motion to proceed to S. 1925, the bill reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act.

Yesterday, the House passed (274-146) H.R. 4089 to protect and enhance opportunities for recreational hunting, fishing and shooting, and for other purposes." Th environmentalist and anti-hunting crowd including the Center for Biological Diversity are upset. It was worth seeing this bill passed just to see these people upset. The bill allows hunters to bring back their polar-bear trophies from Canada. It stops the abusive the abusive environmental review of hunting and fishing by the EPA. And, it allows fishermen and hunters to continue to use lead based products like fishing weights and shot gun shells. This laws seeks to stop the abuse and overreach by government against hunters and fishermen.  But it is questionable that the bill will make it through the Democrat Senate let alone be signed by an environmental activist president. But with this success, the bill will probably be reintroduced in 2012 and could pass if Republicans gain control of Congress and the Presidency.

The House passed (410- 2) H.R. 1815 the "posthumously award a Congressional Gold Medal to Lena Horne in recognition of her achievements and contributions to American culture and the civil rights movement."

President Obama made a big show yesterday of announcing yet another effort to investigate alleged “manipulation” of oil markets. Of course, this is yet another political response to the problem of painfully high gas prices which will do essentially nothing to lower them, just like his recent push to raise taxes on American energy producers. As Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell pointed out yesterday, this is “the same thing Washington Democrats always call for when gas prices go up. . . . The President’s goal here isn’t to do something about the problem. It’s to make people think he’s doing something about the problem, until the next crisis comes along.”

The Washington Post editors certainly aren’t buying it. They write today, “President Obama is fond of saying that there is no silver bullet to bringing down gasoline prices. On Tuesday, however, he went into the silver bullet business. With gas prices high and an election looming, the president announced a very public ‘crackdown’ on ‘those who manipulate the market for private gain at the expense of millions of working families.’ . . . Yet the administration can’t offer any satisfying explanation for why [his policies] are so necessary as to require emergency congressional action.” The editors add, “[A] senior administration official deflected questions about whether regulators have detected any hint of manipulation and would not give an example of the sort of rigging the president suspected regulators might find with more resources. The official instead repeatedly pointed to Enron — a scandal involving electricity, not oil, markets. So the argument boils down to: ‘Maybe the CFTC will find something, we don’t really know what.’”

Of course, they point out, “No one should imagine that this will help much at the pump, no matter how much the White House talks of the urgent imperative to protect vulnerable consumers. America, after all, has been down the blame-price-manipulators road before. In 2006, President Bush ordered an investigation into gas-price gouging that had trouble finding even credible complaints of price manipulation. In 2008, the CFTC found that speculation wasn’t systematically driving gas-price increases.”

The editors at Bloomberg are even less impressed. “No one, least of all President Barack Obama, should expect oil or gasoline prices to fall because of the five-point plan he unveiled at the White House yesterday,” they wrote yesterday. They explain, “[S]peculators aren’t inherently bad. Quite to the contrary: They serve a vital purpose, helping create a market of buyers and sellers. Many academic researchers have found that speculators, by anticipating future price moves, can reduce volatility. It is true that traders, as opposed to actual users such as airlines and truckers, account for the bulk of the transactions in oil futures markets. But that doesn’t mean they are to blame for higher oil prices. Speculators also operate in the markets for natural gas, where prices have plunged almost 60 percent in the past year because of vast increases in supplies. Speculators can push prices up or down, but they can’t repeal the laws of supply and demand.”

Speaking on the Senate floor this morning,Leader McConnell highlighted what President Obama’s latest announcement focusing on show over substance reveals about his presidency: “With gas prices hovering around four dollars a gallon, I think it’s important for the American people to realize that there are two camps on this issue in Washington. There are those who want to do something about the problem, and there are those who just want people to think they’re doing something about the problem. And let’s be clear: President Obama is firmly planted in the say anything, but do-nothing camp.

“If there were any doubt about that he dispelled it when he blocked the Keystone pipeline, and then again this week by embracing the age-old Democrat dodge of blaming gas prices on speculators. Look: what bothers Americans isn’t that the President has unpopular views on this issue. Everybody knows he’s doesn’t really support an all-of-the above approach to energy. What bothers people is the fact that he pretends like he does. What bothers people is the President blocking one half of a pipeline one day, then showing up at a ribbon-cutting for the other half on another. It’s blocking domestic energy, and then taking credit for increases that came about as a result of his predecessor’s decisions. It’s pretending that speculators have a big impact on the price of gas when his own staff can’t even point to any.

“This week has been a real clarifier for people when it comes to this President. Whether it’s the Buffett tax that won’t lower the deficit or a commission on speculators that even the White House says won’t lower the price of gas, what they’ve seen this week is a President who seems a lot more interested in looking like he’s solving problems than actually solving them.”

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Tags: Barack Obama, oil, gasoline prices US Senate, postal reform bill, Violence Against Women Act, Us House, hunters, fishermen To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!