Hutch Report: Congress Looks Silly In Gas Price Debate

President Bush and most Republican leaders have a huge problem when it comes to creditability on the high price of gasoline this election year. Most Republican Members of Congress have received big contributions from the oil and gas industry, just like President Bush has done. Now when there is a sever oil crisis they look really silly standing out in front of gas stations and talking tough to the oil industry who has given them millions of dollars in contributions over the years. This pandering isn't going to work with the American voters; in fact it will probably have the opposite effect because everyone can see through this pandering. Their best option was to do nothing rather than look like they are trying to do something, which they will never carry through with. The need for power is great and the need for power in Washington is like an addition which Republican leaders see slipping from their hands each passing day.

Many American Republicans left our party over a year ago when they started doing things, which didn't make sense to the rank and file. Over the past few months our original feels have just become stronger as these power hungry politicians have tried to find some way to convince the voters that they deserve another chance. The time for them to have done this was last year when there was no election. However, they just kept on doing their best to anger their own rank and file and now the old ways of getting folks back into the fold come election day isn't working anymore. There were a few folks in the party who saw this coming, but they were quickly dismissed by the leadership and TV pundits who said everything was ok with the Republican Party. They even went so far as to say none of us would vote for Democrats anyway so there was no need to worry about the future of Republican leadership in the Congress.

What these smart by half pundits didn't think about was that while Republicans are unlikely to vote for Democrats even when they are unhappy with their leaders. They will do the next best thing and that is to stay home on election day and watch the current leaders of the party go down to defeat. In reality, this is the only way to get rid of bad leaders in US politics and start over with new faces and ideas who have not gone astray in that corruption center known as Washington DC. I don't see any chance at this time for Republican leaders to convince folks they are truthful in their determination to turn around gas prices or make a serious attempt to fix immigration issues which their own party members have been demanding for months. While they are sick with power in the Congress, they are so afraid of losing that power; they will not take the right course of action to correct problems right now. This is because holding onto power is more important to them than doing the right thing for the folk’s back home.

I hope none of us have to watch the Speaker of the House of Representatives stand in front of a gas station in the future and talk about problems with the oil and gas companies. Really it's shameless. This is the same speaker who will not push meaningful lobby reform in the House because members of that body don't want to lose their perks, even if it means they won't be reelected. The only hope we voters have is that the next bunch of people who are sent to Washington make an attempt to clean up the mess that has been left there by the current Members of Congress. This won't be easy, but they are our only hope of some kind of fiscal discipline being put back into the US government.

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