Gas Prices and Political Pandering

By The New York Times | Editorial

21 May 11

he closer one looks at what passes for serious debate in Washington over energy, the more depressing it gets. The Republicans have nothing to offer but drill, baby, drill. The Democrats are rightly trying to end industry's cushy tax breaks, but that's not an energy strategy.

And everyone, including President Obama, seems more interested in scoring political points over rising gas prices than in confronting complex matters like energy security and climate change.

In the Senate, the two parties spent this week beating each other up without advancing the discussion. The Republicans and three oil-state Democrats blocked a worthy Democratic attempt to strip the five biggest oil companies of $2 billion in tax breaks they do not need. The Democrats then crushed an effort by Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, to match two outrageous measures passed by the House that would expedite lease sales in protected coastal waters while undermining safety reforms adopted after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Mr. McConnell said his bill would bring relief at the pump by raising domestic output. That is fiction. Production will take years to come online and even then would have a tiny impact on prices set on the world market.

Mr. Obama has made the right arguments in the past - that the way to achieve true energy security and protect the environment is with greater automobile efficiency, alternative fuels and mass transit. Last weekend, he, too, was out there pitching domestic production.

He announced several modest steps to speed up the search for oil and gas, including seismic studies to measure resources off the Atlantic Coast, long-planned lease sales in the gulf and further development of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. None will quickly lead to new drilling or have any effect on gas prices. Yet because his remarks were framed as a response to gas prices, he helped feed the Republicans' bogus narrative.