House GOP: Great News On OBL — Now How About Those Gas Prices?

GOP Leaders
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

The two-week congressional recess that just ended was, it’s fair to say, a little less than quiet. Rowdy townhalls focused on the GOP’s plan to end Medicare, the release of President Obama’s long-form birth certificate, capped off by the killing of Osama bin Laden. So on their first official day back to business on Capitol Hill, House Republican leaders attempted to shift the focus back to where they want it: gas prices.

Or, more succinctly, to shift the focus to the ways they say Democrats and President Obama are making Americans pay more at the pump. En masse, top leaders from the House GOP stood before the mics on Tuesday morning and tried to get the legislative session back on track by focusing on the issue they’ve said is a winner for them. Drilling, baby, drilling.

And after some talk about the bipartisan victory that is the death of bin Laden, the Republicans went right back to hammering Democrats over the cost of fuel.

“Our members came back and heard from their constituents over the last two weeks and suffice it to say they got an earful on gas prices,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) said. “And I think that some of the questions being asked is how can a country as great as America not have a coherent energy policy. In the House this week we’re going to try and do something about that. We are bringing to the floor measures which go right to the point of undoing some of the impediments currently in place stopping or at least slowing down production of energy here at home.”

Most reports from the town halls of the past two weeks showed voters angry over the Republican plan to end Medicare as it’s currently known. But neither Cantor nor any of the other leaders at the morning’s presser — which came after a House GOP caucus meeting — even uttered the word Medicare, much less discussed the the protests to their plan. Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) did mention talk of the Republican budget plan at the town halls, but he also said the main focus was energy prices.

“As we talked inside our conference, many of them had town hall meetings and many of them brought up the budget,” McCarthy said, “but the overwhelming discussion was the rising price of gasoline.”

Cantor declined to take any questions on Medicare posed by TPM as he walked away, leaving the whole event completely devoid of the topic.

Before the death of bin Laden and the ensuing questions over the U.S.’s partnership with Pakistan, the skyrocketing price of gas was expected to be the dominant topic of the next few weeks, providing political hay for both sides of the aisle, but with no real potential for a short-term fix.

On Tuesday morning, Republicans sought to return the fight to that battlefield, lobbing oily rhetoric at the White House and the Democrats. The short version: Dems have no clue about gas prices.

“Democrat energy solutions have basically been a lot like those newfangled curly-cubed light bulbs,” Deputy Whip Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said. “They cost too much, they’re too expensive to afford, they’re made in China, and they cost American jobs.”

Republicans have long said that the White House’s plans to boost alternative energy production and raise emissions standards (as well as phase out what they repeatedly suggest is America’s best loved consumer product, the incandescent light bulb) represent a wrong-headed approach to lowering energy costs. They say that the best way to make oil cheaper is to let companies pull more of it out of American soil and do it as fast as possible.

Obama has said that there are no quick solutions to the energy price problem, but has advocated for a combined approach of increased production and increased investment in new technology funded by ending gas company subsidies.

Republicans, meanwhile, are proposing legislation that would increase coastal drilling, increase oil refinery permitting and generally attempt to get more oil here.

On Tuesday they tried to make the gas price problem the Democrats’ alone.

“We have an administration that, for all intents and purposes, has waged war on carbon-based energy, which could make American energy independent,” Republican conference chair Jeb Hensarling said.

Latest DC
Comments
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: