Democratic Senate vs Republican House on Gas Prices

Gasoline prices are climbing higher and higher, and it's not even summer yet, when gasoline prices traditionally go real high. These high prices cut into discretionary spending in families, and also put increasing inflationary pressure businesses who need to pay more for fuel costs and transportation, and they then pass these higher costs on to consumers as higher prices, further cutting into discretionary spending. High gasoline prices are a threat to our prosperity and will increasingly work to lower economic growth, cause unemployment, and lower real incomes of the lower and middle class who are most affected by rises in gasoline prices.

There are likely many reasons for the rise in gasoline prices, but at the heart of the matter is that there is increasingly demand for the product and yet the supply of the product is not increasing. There is no documented evidence of evil rich millionaires hoarding billions of gallons of gasoline in black-painted tankers that float in the middle of Hades, and there is considerable evidence that the Middle East is growing more unstable, partly due to Obama's policies of throwing allies under the bus and yet supporting enemies to stability and international commerce.

Last week the House of Representatives and the Senate both debated and passed legislation to do something about the rising price of gasoline in our nation. Let's look at what each chamber did:

In the House of Representatives, Republicans shoved through a bill that would force the Interior Department (controlled by Democratic President Barack Obama) to act within 60 days on all applications for offshore drilling permits. You see, under Obama, offshore drilling permits are not being acted on, naturally leading to less discoveries of supplies of oil and natural speculation that oil prices will go higher because of this. Democrats worked to oppose this measure, believing that exploring for and discovering and selling more oil will not provide income, jobs, or cheaper gasoline for the poor citizens of our nation.

For those interested, in Michigan, Congressman Thaddeus McCotter (GOP) voted in favor of lowering gasoline prices and provide jobs and income for our citizens, and Congressman Gary Peters voted against the bill, since he owes green industries a lot for their campaign support over the last several years.

The House then turned to a second Republican-sponsored bill that would open much of the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic shorelines to new oil and gas exploration- again, working to for real expand the supply of oil, which would lead to a real decrease in the cost of gas. Democrats are expected to oppose this measure as well.

In contrast, the Democrats in the Senate are working to demonize oil companies that are doing well because they are doing well, believing that success in producing a product demands punishment. Specifically, they want to cut off taxpayer subsidies to any firm they don't like, and continue to use the money that they suck off of profitable firms to subsidize unprofitable and inefficient 'green' companies, who kick back massive amounts of campaign funding to Democrats as a thank you for this obvious corruption.

These higher taxes will either be passed on to consumers as higher gasoline prices, or if is not passed on to consumers it will work to reduce the profitability of these firms so that they have less money to invest in improving efficiency and greening their operations, less money to look for new supplies of oil and gas, and less money to pay their employees. Investors will be paid lower dividends, leading to those people on fixed incomes from investments to suffer, and these important stocks will be sold off, leading to a fall in the stock market.

No good will come of the actions of the Democrats in the Senate; instead, many bad things will occur. Supporting this sort of legislation is Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow, who believes that demonizing and attacking private profitable companies and increasing taxes on them will somehow lower the cost of the product that they produce.

It could not be clearer- the policies of the Democrats in the Senate are making our nation less, and the policies of the Republicans in the House are making our nation more, and more is almost better than less.