GOP Panic Over Gas Prices

The Wall Street Journal has an editorial today which takes the GOP and Congress to task for their panicked response to gas prices - especially given the fact that many of these problems are Congress' own fault:

Few things are less becoming in a political party than desperation, as Republicans are now demonstrating as they panic over rising oil and gas prices. If blaming private industry for Congress's own energy mistakes is the best the GOP can do, no wonder its voters may sit out the November election.

Oil prices hit $75 a barrel last week, while gas has reached a national average of about $2.85 a gallon. The Republican response has been to put on Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi fright wigs and shout about corporate greed and market manipulation. House Speaker Denny Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist fired off a letter to President Bush yesterday demanding the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department investigate "price fixing" and "gouging." Senator Arlen Specter wants to go further and impose stricter "antitrust" laws for oil companies, as well as a "windfall profits" tax. Mr. Hastert also delighted the class warriors in the press corps by lambasting recently retired Exxon CEO Lee Raymond's pay "unconscionable."

There's been unconscionable behavior all right, most of it on Capitol Hill. A decent portion of the latest run-up in gas prices--and the entire cause of recent spot shortages--is the direct result of the energy bill Congress passed last summer. That self-serving legislation handed Congress's friends in the ethanol lobby a mandate that forces drivers to use 7.5 billion gallons annually of that oxygenate by 2012.

At the same time, Congress refused to provide liability protection to the makers of MTBE, a rival oxygenate getting hit with lawsuits. So MTBE makers are leaving the market in a rush, while overstretched ethanol producers (despite their promises) are in no way equipped to compensate for the loss of MTBE in the fuel supply. Ethanol is also difficult to ship and store outside of the Midwest, which is causing supply headaches and spot gas shortages along the East Coast and Texas.

There's a lot more - read it all here.

UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg adds this:

Now's the time for Bush and Hastert and Frist to give a stemwinder of a speech calling for major expansions in refining capacity and, better still, drilling in ANWR. It is not the time for a Keystone cops investigation into gas prices. High prices are not a crime and these guys know it. Every inch Republicans concede on this sort of nonsense gives a mile of line to Democrats. It's really just so infuriating.

Exactly. That's what would be known as "leadership", something which is completely lacking right now in Congress.

And National Review Online chimes in with their suggestions that are well worth reading.