As a lifelong Republican I am sad that almost all of my blogging is criticism of my own Party. This Congress failure to act on so many issues is disturbing, and energy policy is it’s latest debacle.
Today’s A1, above the fold piece in the Fresno Bee regarding Congress’ intent to investigate price gouging by oil companies was downright laughable. As usual, the Congress is a day late and many dollar short. We’ve known about our energy situation for years, yet we refuse to go get resources underneath our own soil. It’s a joke. As I wrote for the Lincoln Club of Fresno County website in June, 2004, the President has failed to lead on energy policy and he can’t blame the Senate.
When a President fails to issue any vetoes during his term he has a hard time leveraging his own Party, thus, the Senate largely ignores his wishes. If a few more of these GOP Senators, plus red state Democrat Senators has tougher opposition, it might be different. Instead, this White House gets bullied around on too many fronts.
The President could send a shock wave through world oil markets right now by signing an emergency Presidential order to open up the ANWR region to oil and gas exploration. Critics scoff, but we simply don’t know what is underneath this frozen tundra. And by the way, this is no pristine paradise. ANWR looks much like the surface of the moon. My bet is the Saudis and others would immediately release greater supplies into the world oil market if faced with losing our dollars in the future because we’ve developed our own supplies. In addition, the President should issue an Executive order waiving environmental timelines associated with bringing new refinery capacity online. With no substantial refining capacity developed in the last twenty years, it doesn’t matter how much crude we have – it simply can’t get to the market as gasoline until we can get it refined.
Back to the Congressional investigation. Here are a list of things I would like to see Congress investigated for:
$100 billion in "off budget" aid for Hurricane Katrina
Running up massive deficits/debt year after year even with huge increased in tax revenues
Failing to address a bankrupt Medicare/Social Security system
Post 9-11, failure to create a workable immigration system
Creating a massive new prescription drug program and fudging the cost estimates 500 percent
Frankly, I am sick and tired of Congress reacting to problems and not dealing with the long term messes to be found everywhere in the federal government. We’ve had a Congressional majority for 12 years. There are no excuses left. Either lead or let someone else take the reigns.