• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Bush's Call for Gas Price Investigation Ignites Partisan Blame

Posted on: Tuesday, 25 April 2006, 21:00 CDT

WASHINGTON _ President George W. Bush took aim at rising gas prices and his own sinking popularity by ordering investigations Wednesday into possible price gouging and halting deposits in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

But rather than relief at the pump, the initial impact of the president's speech was a new round of charges and counter-charges about who should get blamed. Even the White House declined to predict that the president's proposals would help motorists any time soon.

"There's not a whole lot anybody in Washington can do in the short term," added David Sykuta, president of the Illinois Petroleum Council.

In a speech to the Renewable Fuels Association, the president warned that gas prices likely would remain high through the summer and continue putting a strain on people.

Asking rhetorically what the government can do to help, the Republican president began by ruling out price caps or a windfall profits tax on oil companies. He asserted that such steps, pushed by Democrats, had failed in the past.

"Americans understand, by and large, that the price of crude oil is going up and that the prices are going up, but what they don't want and will not accept is manipulation of the market. And neither will I," the president said.

He said he was directing the Federal Trade Commission and his Justice Department to investigate allegations of illegal manipulation of gas prices.

The president also endorsed rolling back some of the tax breaks given the oil industry last year and asked energy companies to re-invest their "large cash flows" into alternative fuel sources and expanded capacity for oil refining.

In another step, one that could increase air pollution in the St. Louis region this summer, Bush said he had directed the Environmental Protection Agency to grant waivers to Clean Air Act regulations in order to relieve critical fuel supply shortages.

The president said that the EPA would be looking at ways to reduce the number of localized fuel blends, or boutique fuels. In an effort to combat ozone pollution, much of the gas sold in St. Louis in the summer months at present is among the cleanest fuels in the country, a blend called RFG2- complex.

"When you have an uncoordinated, overly complex set of fuel rules, it tends to cause the price to go up," the president added.

Speaking in front of a mural of cornfields, Bush praised the expanded use of ethanol. He noted that the nation now has 97 ethanol plants, with 35 more planned.

With gas prices exceeding $3 a gallon in much of the country, motorists have been taking out their anger on the White House, polls show. A CNN survey conducted over the weekend said that the president's approval rating had dropped to 32 percent, its lowest yet.

More than two thirds of those who responded in the poll said soaring gas prices were causing a hardship in their families, and nearly 1 in 4 described the hardship as severe.

Republicans leaders in Congress, aware of the threat to the GOP majorities in Congress in November, have pressured the White House look into allegations of price gouging.

Meanwhile, Democrats roundly rejected the value of the president's proposals and blamed Republicans for handouts to oil companies in the energy bill that passed the GOP-run Congress last year.

Noting that gas prices in the Midwest had climbed 11 cents just in the past week, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and 15 other Democrats sent a letter to the White House proposing that a federal anti-price gouging law be enacted by Memorial Day.

Speaking on the Senate floor, Durbin called for a windfall profits tax on the oil industry and referred to the $400 million severance package awarded recently to retiring Exxon Mobil CEO Lee Raymond.

"I think the prices at the pump reflect the oil companies' addiction to greed," Durbin said. At the White House, spokesman Scott McClellan parried questions from reporters about whether the president's proposals would provide motorists any short-term help.

"This is something that has been building for decades, and it is not something we're going to get out of overnight," he said.

Sen. Jim Talent, R-Mo., a member of the Senate Energy Committee, said he is hearing plenty back home from motorists. "When people are paying sixty, seventy dollars or more, depending on what they are driving, to fill up, it's painful for them," he said.

Talent described as "marginal" the potential short-term benefits from the president's plan. But he contended that Congress could keep down prices in the future by opening up the Gulf of Mexico and the Alaskan Arctic lands for drilling and by streamlining permits for new oil refineries.

Talent, who faces an election challenge in November, played down the potential impact on GOP candidates this fall.

"I would say this: Anybody who has opposed increasing supplies or access to supplies of energy has something to answer for. And people are going to demand and explanation," he said.

___

(c) 2006, St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Visit the Post-Dispatch on the World Wide Web at http://www.stltoday.com/

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

_____

GRAPHIC (from KRT Graphics, 202-383-6064):

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com. 1029727

Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch

More News in this Category