6-9-08 by dugan
With gasoline at $4.04 nationally, and nearly $4.50 in California and a few other states, Washington is sleepwalking. President Bush today still had no better idea than drilling for oil in the Arctic wildlife refuge–a piddling, long-range and environmentally rotten idea from the beginning. He’s obviously deaf to anyone but his pals in the oil business. Congress has better instincts, but no action. Take the farm bill–home of an amendment that would put some controls and oversight on the unregulated speculative energy markets that are driving oil prices. Unlike drilling in the Arctic, regulation could drop prices in a matter of months. Yet it’s still not done, though Congress passed the bill overwhelmingly four weeks ago.
President Bush vetoed the bill May 22nd. The veto was about to be overridden when Congress discovered a "clerical error"–the version sent to the White House was missing a whole section. So Congress had to pass the bill again, which it finally did today. Now it has to go back to Bush for another purely symbolic veto–but he’s off to Europe for a a week on a lame-duck tour. Then Congress has to override the veto–next month? Then the understaffed and unambitious regulators at the Commodities Futures Trading Commission have to write the regulations–plenty of room and time for mischief there.
How many of these folks actually have to pump and pay for their own gas? Obviously, not enough of ’em. The easy path for the loophole bill would have been to pass it separately. But Washington has its ways. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and a few allies tried to pass the bill for six straight years and couldn’t. Even if Congress passed it, Bush would have been likely to veto it, since it had the word "regulation" in it. So including the measure in the farm bill was a last-ditch effort. Too bad it didn’t happen way back last year when gas was under $3.00. Or in 2002, the year the Enron loophole bill was first introduced–and gasoline averaged $1.35 a gallon.