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Upton blames Obama for gas prices
Published 10:47pm Wednesday, April 18, 2012U.S. Rep. Fred Upton criticized President Barack Obama’s administration for supporting energy policies that are causing the surging gas prices.
That was the message Upton, chairman of the Energy and Commerce committee, delivered during the Weekly Republican Address this weekend.
“In many ways, this administration’s policies are moving us backward,” Upton said, “and making gas prices even worse.”
Upton, R-St. Joseph, blasted Obama for rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline — a project Upton argues will “decrease our dependence on oil from unstable regions of the world.”
Upton said there are two bills in Congress that Democrats are blocking. One bill calls for cutting regulations on refineries, while the other would open more federal land for energy development.
“Energy could be a great American success story,” Upton said. “Today, we’re knocking at the door of a brighter energy future … as long as Washington doesn’t create artificial obstacles.
“That is what the Republicans are working toward, and we invite the president to join us. If he won’t lead, we will.”
Tags: U.S. Rep. Fred Upton
Upton is no fool. He knows perfectly well that what he is saying is not true. He’s just pandering for political advantage, telling you what he thinks you want to hear: “It’s all that darned Obama’s fault.”
Gas and other petroleum products are traded on a global market. We must bid against the growing markets in China, India, etc. for gas and oil whether it is produced in the US or elsewhere. Oil produced here does not stay here, it goes to whoever is willing to pay the most for it.
No matter how aggressively we produced oil at home, even if we totally ignored potential environmental dangers, US produced oil would make only a small contribution to total world production. Hence, it could have only a small impact on price. And that does not take into account the fact that any ramping up of production, which as a matter of fact is already ramped up, would take years to bring any oil onto the market.
It is time people stopped believing such politically motivated criticism and recognized the real cause of this as well as many other troubles. The developing world is, as the name implies, developing. So we must now compete, in this case by bidding for things we want, against people who used to not have enough money, education, etc. to provide meaningful competition. And that naturally drives our costs up.
Time to wake up and quit telling ourselves we are exceptional and realize we face stiff global competition from many places on many fronts. We won’t be getting anything because of where we were born any more, we need to win it.
Quit listening to people like Upton blame the other guy and look for politicians who first tell the truth, that we are now in a very competitive world for which we are ill prepared—poorly educated, working with old crumbling infrastructure that is not fit for a third world country, not investing enough in research, etc—and second present some ideas about how we might get ourselves into a better position to compete and win.
Like it or not, it’s game on and the rest of the world recognizes this even if we don’t. The high price of gas is just one sign of the underlying reality.
Last point. One other thing you will not hear from a guy like Upton: One factor that has in fact had a major impact on preventing gas prices from being even higher than they already are—improvements in fuel efficiency. Think about the double effect here: Every gallon you save is a gallon you do not have to pay for in the first place, and since you are not bidding on that gallon, there is less demand for the gallons you do buy, pushing the price down that tiny little bit. Multiplied by many millions of gallons, and this has a huge impact. How much work has Upton been doing on energy efficiency? Or does he put his effort into obstructing such initiatives?