It looks like the main issue Republicans are going to hammer Democrats over in this election is oil prices. This strikes a lot of Democrats as ineffective since the fault for the present crisis is clearly due to Republican ineptitude.
That would be a mistake. As the Denver Post reports:
"Americans just want something done about this problem. . . . They don't want to go back over what's already happened, whether the Bush administration has screwed things up," said Karlyn Bowman, an expert on public opinion at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington.
"I think that public has been rethinking the energy issue. You're definitely seeing some movement in the direction of more drilling," she said.
In other words, we're in a world of hurt right now and people want solutions right now. Discussing who's fault it is is not just irrelevant to the problem at hand, but is wasting time that could be spent addressing the issue.
So what to do? Well one key piece is clearly bringing forth a credible "Manhattan Project" type plan to bring us to energy independence (and drastically reduced carbon emissions) as quickly as possible. And this must include a plan to move all new vehicles off of gas within the next 2 years. The immediacy of that shift starting would have an immediate impact on oil prices as the oil producing countries would then be strongly incented to reduce prices to the level that the issue loses it's urgency.
Ok, that's all well and good. It is actually addressing the problem and all of the policy wonks in the country will be thrilled. Unfortunately, while the above helps in the political discussion, it's not a home run. It's barely a single. It's not sexy, it's complicated, and it doesn't have a giant impact today.
So what if we add this little zinger to the equation. According to ABC News:
In the most recent quarter, Exxon Mobil said it spent $8 billion buying back stock, versus $7 billion on capital and exploration expenditures.
What if the Democrats proposed a law that restricts stock buy-backs at the oil companies to 5% of the amount the spend on exploration (and alternative energy production)? And in addition point out that there are enough approved leases, off-shore as well as on-shore, for the oil companies to be drilling tomorrow if they invested all their profits in doing so.
The beauty of this approach is it pushes the drilling solution back on to the oil companies. Plus it makes the Republicans look like shills for the oil companies rather than people trying to find a solution.
Because how do they counteract such a proposal? It won't fly politically to say that Congress needs to do twice as much so that the oil companies can spend half their profits on increasing their stock price instead of increasing the supply of oil.
I think putting this proposal out there would destroy this as an issue for the Republicans. Plus, while it will take some discussion to determine if it's a good idea, it's definitely worth considering.
