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EDITORIAL: Pointless Pandering on Gasoline Prices

Posted on: Monday, 1 May 2006, 09:02 CDT

By The Morning Call, Allentown, Pa.

May 01--Boycotts! Rebates! Windfall profit taxes! Investigations!

That's what you get when gasoline prices hit $3 a gallon. Or at least, that's what frustrated motorists and members of Congress start proposing as solutions to the price shock ripple throughout the nation. Little, if any, of these proposals will change what's happening. But it sure helps the politicians feel they're doing something.

It's a perfect David vs. Goliath. Millions of wallet-squeezed motorists beset by the avarice of Big Oil. Didn't Exxon-Mobil, the nation's biggest oil company, have a 7 percent increase in earnings for January and March, up to $8.4 billion? Competition is the problem, hollered Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who said if Congress broke up Big Oil into little pieces more competition would bring prices down. That won't happen in time for the drive to the beach, but it sounds good.

Meanwhile, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., poked his party's eye a little by suggesting a windfall profits tax. And, some of his Senate colleagues even proposed rescinding some oil company tax breaks. This might do some good for the Treasury, but how will it help the oil companies produce more oil, build more refineries and put more gasoline on the market? President Bush rejected the ideas Friday. Nonetheless, he asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the oil companies to see if there's been price gouging.

All of this has been an epiphany for the President. "These oil prices are a wake-up call," he said Friday. "We're dependent on oil. We need to get off oil."

Yet, Senate Republicans are so thirsty for whatever oil lies beneath the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska that they want to offer millions of motorists $100 rebates. Besides just being two fill-ups for an SUV, how will that help the nation get off oil?

Supply-and-demand is the problem. Improving vehicle fuel-economy standards, something the President wants to do, would help. So would developing alternative energy sources. Pandering politicians and the public need to look in the mirror -- and maybe, buy bicycles.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Morning Call, Allentown, Pa.

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Source: The Morning Call, Allentown, Pennsylvania

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