Democrats: Perhaps THE Major Cause of High Gas Prices!!

FoxNews reported that yesterday the Dems once again voted down opening up more U.S. coastal waters for oil exploration.

WASHINGTON — A House subcommittee on Wednesday rejected a Republican-led effort to open up more U.S. coastal waters to oil exploration.

Rep. John Peterson, R-Pa., spearheaded the effort. His proposal would open up U.S. waters between 50 and 200 miles off shore for drilling. The first 50 miles off shore would be left alone.

But the plan failed Wednesday on a 9-6, party-line vote in a House appropriations subcommittee, which was considering the proposal as part of an Interior Department spending package.

With record oil prices and gas prices projected to hover around the $4 mark for the rest of the summer, Republicans have ratcheted up their efforts to open up oil exploration along U.S. coastline. But the long-sought change has so far been unsuccessful.

Most offshore oil production and exploration has been banned since a federal law passed in 1981.

"We are kidding ourselves if we think we can drill our way out of these problems," House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., said during the bill mark-up session.

For his part, Peterson said: "There is no valid reason for Congress to keep the country from energy resources it needs."

The chart above is from Power Line, saying it is from Republican whip Roy Blunt's office. He put together this chart showing the practical effects of Democratic vs. Republican policies on the price of gasoline at the pump.

Blunt's office adds this footnote:

Methodology: Retail gasoline prices are the result of literally hundreds of factors including crude oil supply, global demand, refinery capacity, regulation, taxes, weather, the value of the dollar, etc. Therefore it is impossible to say with certainty what one individual action will do to the overall price. However, based on what we know about the impact of crude oil supply and prices it is possible to develop some potential ranges of impact on gasoline prices for certain policy changes. For example, using the methodology employed by Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats that suspending shipments into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (between 40-77,000 barrels of oil a day) would reduce gas prices by at least 5 cents, bringing ANWR online (at least one million barrels of oil a day) could impact gasoline prices by between 70 cents and $1.60.

[Note: I tried finding this chart on Blunt's website, but could not. So, I can't vouch for its authenticity. The point, however, about the Dems vs. the Repubs energy plans is well made.]

Check out Gateway Pundit's excellent article on the Dems' lame attempts at solving our energy crisis ... or should I say "the Dems' suppression of American energy independence?" The Dems have consistently voted against any attempts to build new refineries, open drilling in the Gulf and ANWR, etc. It's sickening that they only opt for funding alternative energy sources (unproven and in an embryonic state), fueling Global Warming hysteria, proposing to sue OPEC (freaking laughable), and parade the Big Boy Oil Guys in front of Congress and threaten them with taxing their windfall profits ... which will only trickle down to us little guys. Idiots.