George W. Bush has decided to lift the Executive off-shore drilling ban in an effort to goad Congress into lifting its ban.  I guess he forgot that the oil companies already have 1000’s of leases for millions of acres of oilfields that they have not bothered to drill on.  Fortunately, the President also needs Congress to lift its legislative ban in order to begin exploration.  As we have mentioned here before, off-shore drilling will produce zero short term benefits to our oil crisis but would have long term repercussions to our coastlines.  The negligible affect that drilling would have on gas prices would not accur until 2030. The ten year timeline being pushed by the GOP  is the timeline for pumping the oil.  Any consumer benefit would not be felt until twelve or thirteen years following.  By then we will have alternative energy mechanisms in place so that the drilling and its minor benefit will be moot.  Sen. Barack Obama proposes giving a $1000 middle class tax cut that would go to 95 percent of all families and off-set the burden that such skyrocketing gas prices have presented.  In addition, Obama proposes investing in renewable energy sources for the long term.  While the Bush-McCain solution would only worsen our addiction to oil by increasing our dependence.  McCain claims that he would like to employ a cocktail of solutions to solve the energy crisis, but including off-shore drilling in his mixture is unnecessary and meaningless.  We have the technology and supply on hand today (wind, solar, biomass, strategic petroleum reserves) to affect the price of gas, so giving oil companies more oilfields to hoard in their reserve is just greed and completely pointless.  This solution does nothing more than increase the value of the stock of oil companies.  One other possible piece of legislation affecting gas and oil prices that Congress plans to address next week is to the Enron loophole.  The democrats in Congress plan to introduce a Speculation bill next week that will address the loophole.

As for the Bush-McCain plan, exactly the type of sensible solution that would be utilized by a drug addict.