(From today’s Wall Street Journal: “Few things are less becoming in a political party than desperation, as Republicans are now demonstrating as they panic over rising oil and gas prices. If blaming private industry for Congress’s own energy mistakes is the best the GOP can do, no wonder its voters may sit out the November election….There’s been unconscionable behavior all right, most of it on Capitol Hill. A decent portion of the latest run-up in gas prices–and the entire cause of recent spot shortages–is the direct result of the energy bill Congress passed last summer. That self-serving legislation handed Congress’s friends in the ethanol lobby a mandate that forces drivers to use 7.5 billion gallons annually of that oxygenate by 2012….These columns warned Republicans this would happen. As recently as last year, ethanol was selling for $1.45 a gallon. By December it had reached $2 and is now going for $2.77. So refiners are now having to buy both oil and ethanol at sky-high prices. In short, the only market manipulation has been by politicians.”) Posted on April 18, 2006: Gas prices are way up and it’s not just because of soaring oil prices on the world market that are beyond our control. Under the GOP’s watch and pushed farm state legislators, Congress mandated more ethanol use in our gasoline. The net result, as Irwin Stelzer explains, is tighter gas supplies and even higher prices at the pump.
Good job, Republicans. ADM may be happy but I doubt most voters are — for now at least.
