When liberals and democrats say we can’t drill our way to energy independence they’re absolutely right. When they say that approving drilling today wouldn’t lead to more oil for 10 years they’re also right. But in both cases the reason why they’re right is because they’re the ones standing in the way.
Could we be harvesting oil from new leases in less than 10 years? Sure, but it slows things down considerably when the government takes years to approve leases and then the oil companies have to fight 20 lawsuits from environmental groups in court before they can do anything.
Could we drill our way to energy independence? Sure, but only if legislators make it easier.
The problems politicians are having is that while they can hide a lot of what they do from the American people, this one is fairly cut and dry. When supply of something goes up, prices go down, and most people, even if they’ve never heard of a supply-demand curve, get this principle. Most people know the only way to bring down gas prices is to increase supply, and that means more drilling. And anybody who has 30 seconds to spend learning the basics about futures trading can see that if the government were to come out today and say “We’re going to make it easier to drill…” then prices would fall immediately.
Then Harry Reid comes out on Monday talking about this possible special session to vote on drilling and blasts McCain about his desire to start drilling. He totally lies (What is it about this guy that allows him a Temple recommend with such dishonesty?) and says that McCain is basically stupid for supporting a policy of drilling for oil that won’t do anything to help oil prices until the year 2030? Where in the world is is pulling these dates out of???