Pelosi on Big Oil's Republican Friends

Republicans Dennis Hastert and Bill Frist are promising action on gasoline prices and oil company profits. They didn't do anything the last time prices went up right after Hurricane Katrina though Bush was forced to release some oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve because of a serious shortfall. But Republican poll numbers are suddenly falling and the November elections aren't far away. Suddenly Hastert and Frist care about the average American. Where have they been the last five years?

Susie of Suburban Guerilla carries House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's choice words for Big Oil's favorite politicians:

If you want to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and therefore improve our national security situation, you can’t do it if you’re a Republican because you are too wedded to the oil companies. We have two oilmen in the white house. The logical follow-up from that is $3 a gallon gasoline. There is no accident. It is a cause and effect. A cause and effect.

(snip)

The middle class squeeze is on, competition in our country is affected by the price of energy and of oil and all of a sudden you take a trip outside of Washington, see the fact that the public is outraged about this, come home and make a speech, let’s see that matched in your budget, let’s see that matched in your policy, let’s see that matched in and you’re separating yourselves yourself from your patron, big oil, cut yourself off from that anvil holding your party down and this country down, instead of coming to Washington and throwing your Republican colleagues under the wheels of the train, which they mightily deserve for being a rubber stamp for your obscene, corrupt policy of ripping off the American people.

Putting our energy future and therefore our national security into the hands of two mediocre former oil executives is no longer acceptable. Leaving our energy future entirely in the hands of oil companies is also no longer acceptable. Everyone, Democrats and Republicans should be demanding full investigations into what's going on with energy. But we can't rely on Republicans for an honest investigation or to keep their word when the cameras are on them. And Democratic politicians need to be careful that they fully understand what is going on.