A rainforest in Iowa. Replacing police cars in Beverly Hills with Lexus Hybrids. A speaking tour for Former Vice President Al Gore to promote his “An Inconvenient Truth” documentary. When thinking of solutions to the nation’s energy crunch, most Missourians would not put these proposals at the top of their list.

 

Yet, those were just some of the “solutions” worth three billion dollars that were included in an “energy” bill last week. I believe that it is an insult to the English language to call this package an energy bill. The static electricity created by rubbing your shoes against the carpet will create more energy than this legislation.

 

The bill also increased taxes on American businesses in the oil exploration and production business. These taxes will be passed along to us in the form of higher gas prices at the pump. With prices hovering near $3 a gallon it is exactly the wrong thing to do.

 

We need a real energy bill that spurs domestic production of energy. We need to use our resources like the Alaska Wildlife Nature Reserve, which is the size of South Carolina. The footprint needed for billions of barrels of oil would be the size of KCI airport.

 

We need to encourage more refineries to be built. A new refinery has not been built in the United States in over 20 years. There is much that Congress can do to help increase the amount of American energy produced. We need real energy solutions, not half-baked ideas that only sound good in San Francisco and Washington.

 

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