Deson

Since you bolded the bipartisan part I'm not sure if you were joking with that or serious.

First and foremost the design of the senate is to engender precisely such a cooperative environment vice the more raucous house. Having said that, my issue is purely that Republicans and their allies calling out the Dems after sitting on the issue for all their time in control of congress is bullshit. They should not be praised for being years late on an issue they could have owned. Had they been willing to compromise when they were in power, we wouldn't even be posting on it here.

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Otis

Truth is, this was nothing but a political stunt, out of sheer desparation. The overwhelming majority of Americans blame them for high fuel prices and they're trying to shift some of that blame to the dems before they take their 6 week paid vacation too.

And yeah, the dems are just as politically motivated too. They had no intentions of letting repubs off the hook.

Bottom line though, we were all gonna be paying $4/gallon from now on anyway, and nothing was going to change that over the next 6 weeks, so it's win/win for democrats.

What's silly is anyone who felt a lump in their throat and a tear in their eye when they thought the GOP actually did this because they cared about any of us.

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Meta

My heart bleeds, holy shit that's cheap. Over here it's about £1.30/litre. Which is about $2.60/litre. So that's approx $11.70/gallon.

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Rothrek

No matter how much stupid shit I post on this website, Otis never fails to make him self look dumber.

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Widem

I don't know how any democrat can even defend what they are doing in congress atm.

Saying that republicans had 6 years to fix this problem is literally just stipud, b/c well they never had an energy problem. Congress always reacts to situations to best combat problems. Congress over the past years hasn't focused on energy prices, b/c well it wasnt a problem at all, the focus was on clean energy. Clean energy and cheap energy don't go hand in hand. Furthermore, the republicans (ie republican congress) did do this to combat this problem. Corn has been rediculously subsidized in order to "test out" the alternative fuel source of E85 which even at todays gas prices is still sizeably more expensive, they were struck down numerous times on expanding our nuclear fuel facilities, and have had subsudies for alternative fuel reasearch and major tax incentives, such as 1 i know off the top of my head b/c I financed a biofuel plant was that if they ever incur a loss that loss can be carried forward forever until they turn a profit.

Anyways, acting like nothing was done or nobody cared is stupid. Furthermore this argument in congress (b/c i'm sure no one here actually watched the debates on C-span, but alas im a huge nerd) had to do with the Energy policy being forced down the legislations throat consisted of regulation for market speculation...and thats it.

How is your country's energy policy for the year simply try and keep speculators from driving up the price? First off no one is even sure if abusive speculation practices are occuring. Before you can make new rules you have to find where the corruption is taking place. Its just ass backwards messing with for all we know a very efficient market when we have no idea if or what people are doing to manipulate it.

This is where this disagreement occurred. The republicans wanted discussion and policy on other things such as yes opening up more oil field, creating better tax incentives for solar and wind power, nuclear power considerations, futures market task forces able to make arrests and help construct futures reforms, and they didnt want any money given away, they wanted only tax incentives.

Where the communication broke down was when the democrats REFUSED to even open the floor to any discussion whatsoever. In 2006 after 7 days there were 40ish amendments to the energy policy, in 2008 after 7 days there were 0. Yes thats absolutely 0 comprimise.

If I were the democrats I would have said "OK, we will give you drilling, tax incentives for alternative fuel, no nuclear power, the futures market task force, and we get to earmark X amount of dollar for our alternative fuels"

They prolly would have gotten it and thats a pretty good compromise even though I would have fought tooth and nail to get some nuclear reactors in there.

Otis

Like I said, this was nothing but the blame game. Right now, at least two-thirds of the American public blames The War/Bush/Republicans for high fuel prices. Both parties know this. And both parties know that won’t change if Congress does nothing.

Which is fine by me. I’ll gladly pay a few extra bucks at the pump for a little regime change.

For all the exclusionary tactics practiced by the GOP-ran Congress of 94 – 06, they’ve got it coming. Fuck em.

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Widem

So basically your point is that you are willing to block progress in order to blame a republican president who has nothing to do with congress debate in order to trick people into voting for your buddies.

Thats pretty interesting coming from you.

Deson

Just to be sure, what do you mean when you say the president has nothing to do with "congress debate"?

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Widem

the quarrel brought up in this thread was the fact republicans were upset not only there were no amendments, but that the floor wasnt even open to debate. The president has no influence over that.

Edit - point being is if a compromise was struck and then ultimately Bush used his almighty veto power, then you can bitch about it, but even at that you can't blame republicans you can only blame bush.

Ladred

The only influence the president has had on the debate at hand is him removing the presidential moratorium on offshore drilling, at least in my opinion.

edit: that single move killed off a democrat scapegoat which was.. 'even if we vote for it the president still has his moratorium.'

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