Just Saying NO!

By Alan Caruba

Don Young, (R-Alaska) ranking member of the Committee on Natural Resources sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to members of both parties of the House to remind them that, as energy prices rise steadily, “Congress is doing nothing to ease the pain at the pump.”

As Rep. Young put it, up to now the policy has been to:

Say NO to ANWR’s 30-year, one million barrels a day supply of American oil.

So NO to an estimated two trillion barrels of American shale oil.

Say NO to clean-burning natural gas.

Say NO to clean coal.

So NO to energy exploration in the 85% of the United States’ outer continental shelf.

Say NO to more energy exploration in the Intermountain West.

Say NO to more hydropower energy.

Say NO to more nuclear energy.

Say NO to any form of energy that will provide meaningful relief from record high energy prices.

Say NO to 90% of the energy that fuels America’s economy.

In truth, Congress has done nothing for four decades and that’s how far behind we are if they were to actually do something tomorrow.

You can’t drill for oil, lay pipelines, refine and transport crude oil overnight. The whole process takes years to build the infrastructure.

For reasons beyond my understanding, both Democrat and Republican Congresses have utterly failed and/or refused to either understand or do anything.

That makes Americans their victims. That means everyone who drives a car or truck is being penalized for stupidity, incompetence, and a situation that has put us at the mercy of nations, some of whom do not like us very much.

Worse, if one just looked at the Alaskan National Wilderness Refuge, the one that environmentalists want to keep in its “pristine” purity for the sake of some caribou and other critters, what is really at stake is 2,000 acres out of 19.6 million!

What’s more, Democrats and environmentalists want to lock up an additional 27.8 billion barrels in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea! That’s why the Bush administration’s Department of Interior is being pressured to declare polar bears “endangered” when every expert on that population says they’re not.

At $120.00 a barrel, we will send $500 billion to foreign governments and hostile dictators in 2008 alone.

At $120.00 a barrel, opening up ANWR would generate $183.5 billion in income tax and royalty revenue that would flow to the federal government over the 30-year lifetime of the field.

If I could tell you why the Democrats oppose this, I would. I do know that Hillary Clinton is talking about confiscating “windfall” profits from the oil companies. Never mind that, for several years, they weren't make that much and what they're making now helps them gear up to meet our energy needs. I can't think of a worse way to discourage them from building new refineries and doing the hugely expensive exploration we need.

This is, in so many ways, so sinister one might reasonably conclude that the Democrat Party—that hasn’t had a new idea since the 1940s—is deliberately acting to harm us all.
That’s something to think about when you step into the voting booth in November.