Congress must stop using the family budget as a laboratory for experimental energy policies

Last week, I blogged on this site about how theearth-first-istas and their limousine liberal allies in theDemocrat party are hurting the true environmentalists; those whoselivelihood depends on the land itself. I argued that thesepseudo-environmentalists are happy to drive up the cost of energywhile they arrogantly believe that Americans can simply “drive lessand pay more” but they have offered no realistic plan to providealternative energy solutions to those people who truly needthem.

That post received a healthy amount of banter and even a coupleof challenges, so I decided to write another one, to keep youinformed about the fight as I see it. Let’s agree that it is withinthe power of Congress to bring the price at the pump down. Thereare any number of contributing factors to the high price of gas;but they all come down to an essential problem- supply is stagnantwhile demand increases. The supply and demand imbalance is fuelinginvestor speculation, and OPEC’s confidence that it can charge asmuch as they want for crude.

We have seen what happens when the United States signals it willincrease domestic supply, as the President did last week: the pricebegins to fall. When Congress follows that action with our own planto increase supply, we should see the price of crude fall evenmore.

Judging by last week’s action, it appears the Democrats in theHouse have finally figured it out, and they are desperatelysearching for a way to satisfy the overwhelming number of Americanswho want to drill here, drill now, and pay less. The problem isthat they are hamstrung by the same “pedi”crats I discussed lastweek; environmental radicals who are using the family budget as alaboratory for their experimental energy policies.

Instead of doing what is right, Democrats have to balance theirextremist base against common sense. In so doing, they forced areal turkey of a bill onto the floor last week. They thought theycould trick the American voters into believing a bill called the“Drill Act” will solve our production problems, but in reality, thelegislation would do very little. The bill merely restated existingrules by which energy companies can exploit leased territory on theAmerican Naval Petroleum Reserve (ANPR), mandated new provisions tobenefit organized labor, and tried to create a litigation nightmarefor American energy producers.

What the bill didn’t do was remove the environmentalistroadblocks to exploring on leased land. For energy companies,acquiring a lease on government land is just the beginning. Themoment you want to sink a well, you can expect to have oneenvironmental group or another file a protest with the Bureau ofLand Management. Since 2001, those protests have gone up 706%. From2001-2007 environmentalists filed an average of 1,180 protests eachyear. During the mid ‘90s, when gas prices were less than a dollarper gallon, protests averaged 167 per year.

Protests bring a company’s exploration to a halt while theprotest is considered. Once the protest phase has been completed,well-heeled environmentalists start the litigation procedure. Ofcourse, the outcome of the case doesn’t matter. All theenvironmentalists and their trial lawyer buddies are trying to dois keep the company tied up long enough to run out the clock on a10 year lease. That isn’t hard.

At the end of the day, Democrats couldn’t sell to their ownconference and the bill failed. That puts us right back where westarted; frozen supply and skyrocketing demand. Democrats did makeone important concession, even if unconsciously. By bringing thebill to the floor in the first place, Democrats conceded drillingfor domestic oil would bring down the price at the pump. So nowthat we are all on the same page about the cause of the problem;how long will it take to get to the same solution?