Forget National Security. Bush’s Buddies Have an Election to Win

by Tula Connell, Apr 25, 2006

Forget national security. We got an election to win.

That’s pretty much President Bush’s so-called solution to screaming-high gas prices.

Bush today called for freezing the nation’s strategic oil reserves to halt escalating pump prices. He’s delaying this summer’s deposits to the reserve—an emergency stockpile of government-owned crude oil that the nation keeps on hand for disastrous events like, oh, terrorist attacks and the like.

Bush said he did not plan to raise taxes on fuel nor impose price caps to control gasoline prices. But he does plan to ask the Environmental Protection Agency to “temporarily” loosen clean air regulations to make it easier for refineries to meet demand more quickly, according to Americablog.

As Susan G writes on DailyKos:

Any bets on how long a “temporary suspension” will last?

And is anyone else detecting a pattern here?

In the wake of Katrina, Bush suspends prevailing wage laws.

But for working families who need to fill up the tank to get to their jobs—paying a good chunk of those earnings to get there—freezing the emergency reserve is a short-term Band-Aid with huge potential risks.

What happens at the end of the summer when the oil reserves are resupplied and gas prices skyrocket again? If you’re just barely getting by, the $30, $40 or $50 you spend at the pump is a large portion of your weekly income. For instance, if you make $8 an hour—$320 a week gross salary—$50 at the gas tank is nearly one-sixth of your weekly salary.

According to a CNN poll, 69 percent of Americans believe the price of gas is causing financial hardship to their families. As the Center for American Progress notes:

When Bush came into office in January 2001, the average price of a regular gallon of gas was $1.46. Today, the price is $2.91, a 100 percent increase over the course of the Bush presidency. In just the last year alone, gas prices have increased more than 30 percent

There are better ways to address unsustainably high gas prices.

Here’s one idea: a windfall profits tax on oil companies. The AFL-CIO union movement supports a special windfall profits tax on oil companies, with the revenue providing assistance to families suffering because of higher energy costs.

As HeraldNet notes, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) appeared on CNN’s “Late Edition” this past weekend and said he believes gas prices “would come down within a matter of days” if President Bush told oil companies that he was going to support a windfall profits tax.

And what about price gouging? Says the DSCC:

The Bush Federal Trade Commission has looked the other way when it comes to price gouging. Even during Hurricane Katrina, when price gouging was rather evident, the FTC investigation “found no evidence of collusion among oil companies in the 2005 gas price surge.” [San Francisco Chronicle, 4/25/06]

Maybe rising oil prices have something to do with the recent rapid mergers of oil companies. Over the past five years, the Bush administration has allowed oil companies to merge, resulting in uncompetitive domestic gasoline markets. According to according to Public Citizen, the largest five oil companies operating in the United States (ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, ConocoPhillips, BP and Royal Dutch Shell) now control:

• 14.2 percent of global oil production (nearly as much as the entire Middle East members of the OPEC cartel);
• 48 percent of the domestic oil production (especially significant because the United States is the third-largest oil producer in the world);
• 50.3 percent of domestic refinery capacity;
• 61.8 percent of the retail gasoline market; and
• 21.3 percent of domestic natural gas production.

The Raw Story reports today that Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is calling for a look at whether big oil companies should be broken up. Saying “enough is enough,” Schumer is quoted on Raw Story as saying:

“We also have to reexamine whether having only a handful of giant oil companies can coexist with the needs of the American consumer and a rational energy policy in this country—I do not believe it does. And so I’ll be offering an amendment to the supplemental that will require a complete examination as to whether or not we should break up the big oil companies.”

That’s another great idea. After all, paying for a tank of gas isn’t something ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond has had to worry about: His company is making profits at a rate of $75,000 every minute.

Even before gas prices skyrocketed to more than $3 gallon, ExxonMobil had rung up a record $36 billion in profits by the end of 2005.

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