The Congressional Republicans passed bills in the House and the Senate 5 times in the 90's to open our country to drilling in the ANWR and the OCS. Bill Clinton vetoed all 5 bills.
In the 2000's the Republican controlled House passed the very same bill, but when it made it to the Republican controlled Senate it failed by 1 vote (John McCain). Thanks John, you knucklehead! Fortunately he now sees the error of his way and is FOR drilling.
Now, with the country in dire financial straights, President Bush has lifted the Presidential moratorium on drilling in the OCS, however there is still a congressional moratorium in place and the Democrats aren't budging.
If you like $4-5 gas you can thank the Democrats, they have publicly stated that the US needs to pay more for oil and gasoline. They have made it all but impossible for the US to drill for oil in our largest reserves, build nuclear power plants, build new refineries, or use clean burning coal technology. The party of "NO". We are going to reduce our way to the solution?!?!? I've seen a lot of airlines try that, it doesn't work.
I don't want to tell you who to vote for, but to say no one has a plan to reduce our foreign oil consumption problem is just outright wrong.
"Hope and Change". If you don't change, all you'll have is hope. "Hope" ain't gonna get those gas prices down.
A few things that you niglect to mention. Oil drilled out of ANWR and the OCS is not guaranteed to be sold here in the US. We send allot of oil out of alaska to Japan already.
Also, the estimates I have seen for the OCS are for about 1 million barrels per day. That is only 5% of US daily consumption. Or about .20 cents a gallon. But wait, oil is a world commodity. 1 million barrels per day is alittle bit more than 1% of daily consumption, or about a .05 cent per gallon reduction in prices. But I guess it will kill the speculators, so we should triple the affect, well say it will lower prices .15 cents per gallon!
No thanks. Republicans like say drill, drill, drill, but they aren't putting any realistic numbers with the retoric. All they say is pay less, but they won't even make a stated GUESS as to how much less. That is because they know it is almost meaningless.
I heard W make speach a few months back. He said that drilling in ANWR would "likely" bring down the cost of oil. He couldn't even say that it would. Only that it "likely" would.
It is all political. Even pickens, a life long republican and oil man says "this is one problem we can't drill our way out of". Sure he has money on the line, but that does not make him wrong.
Our policies have sent trillions of dollars over to China and India. We have almost single handedly created the growth beast that is those two countries. There is no putting that cat back in the bag. They will continue to grow as we transfer our wealth to China and India. We have created this incredible demand for oil over there. It is our fault.
Drill, drill, drill just keeps us captive's of big oil for longer. But the problem will not go away. 1-2 million barrels a day won't even make a dent.
Think about it this way, we are the only country that is not exploring its oil resorces. So if we do, and we add our little 1-2 million barrels to the GROWING world demand, the whole wopping 1-2% of supply increase is very close to meanless.
More crack doesn't cure someones addiction to crack.
And about our oil shale in the rockies, what are we going to do, strip mine the rocky mountians? That is rediculous. I don't want to visit the rockies or fly over head and see it turned into a bunch of mines.
