Politics at the Pump

President Bush announced today a series of initiatives designed to rein in the escalating price of gas across the nation. Getting the most press is the President's decision (he is "the decider", after all) to halt government purchasing of oil for our nation's strategic reserves, in hopes that the additional supply would balance out demand and stabilize prices.

However, receiving somewhat less exposure is the response to the real reason prices are so high ... government regulations that require oil companies to replace MTBE (methyl tertiary-butyl ether) with the more expensive (but more environmentally friendly) additive Ethanol (used in the E10 formulation, not E85, which is only for FlexFuel vehicles).

Despite our government's stance on reducing our reliance on unstable regions like Iraq for our fuel, they are now undermining state's rights by allowing oil producers to skate by these regulations in the guise of reducing gas prices. In actuality, the Republicans in Washington D.C. are terrified that the high price of gas will cost them elections this year and in 2008.

Sure, it pisses me off every time I have to put $45-50 worth of gas in my tank (and I have a relatively fuel-efficient vehicle, just a big tank), but at the same time, I'd rather we weren't polluting our gound water in favor of saving a buck. At the same time, as a Republican myself, I partially blame the Democrats for forcing them to make a bad decision, since the Democrats know damned well that this is NOT Congress' problem. The fact of the matter is that if we're going to get serious about curbing our nation's appetite for oil, higher prices are part of that equation. Instead of thinking logically, however, the entire issue has turned into a political hot-potato.

Here's the sick part. President Bush knows all of this. He's calling the high price of gas "disturbing", while simultaeneously stating that "our addiction to oil is a matter of national security." If we're going to break that addiction, high prices have to be part of the answer, yet the President's actions and words aren't matching up.

Fact is, nothing President Bush has proposed today will lower prices in the short term, only give the impression that Republicans are trying to do something about it.