Still Waiting

When trying to win back control of the House in 2006 Nancy Pelosi proclaimed the following in a press release entitled, "With Skyrocketing Gas Prices, Americans Can No Longer Afford Rubber Stamp Congress":

“Democrats have a commonsense plan to help bring down skyrocketing gas prices by cracking down on price gouging, rolling back the billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, tax breaks and royalty relief given to big oil and gas companies, and increasing production of alternative fuels.”

OK. Here's a chart showing the average price of gas since Nancy took the House gavel:


And here's the price of crude oil over the last 10 years:


It went up after her caucus took power, way up, then it went down. Way down. Success? Or maybe something else. Here's a flashback to November of last year, featuring a usual suspect:

CAIRO, Egypt – Saudi Arabia's king says the price of oil should be $75 a barrel, much higher than it is now, but his oil minister indicated Saturday that no measures will likely be taken until OPEC meets again next month.

And that was a long term prognostication at the time. Meanwhile, the price of oil today reached a new yearly high, 74.72 per barrel, which was explained by saying the European markets might be exiting recession even as we continue shedding jobs. So who knows?

What we do know is that Pelosi and her Democrats didn't do jack squat about gas prices as promised. That is, unless she'd like to say the Democrat plan was to wait for an economic downturn nearly as bad as the Great Depression. But we know that can't be true because the recession is solely Bush's fault, which would mean he would also get the credit. Cue the buzzer sound.