While the Democrats are off on their 5-week vacation (a luxury ill-afforded to the average American) the Republicans are ignoring Nancy Pelosi's stubborn refusal to take up a comprehensive energy bill by staging a protest, and now the Democrats, including Mr. Obama are on the defensive.Meeting Monday in the Capitol by the Will Rogers statue, the American humorist who ridiculed Congress as bumblers and bunglers, they plotted a week of protests on the House floor where Republicans are blasting the Democrats for skipping town without taking up a pending energy bill.
The Democrats have "shuttered the U.S. House of Representatives for a five-week vacation while ignoring the No. 1 issue weighing down our economy and the budgets of American families — high gas prices," said Republican Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri.
And it wasn't just the Pelosi Democrats who found themselves under a barrage of political fire on the issue. Barack Obama was being pounded this week by John McCain for not demanding that his party return to take up an "all of the above" energy bill that would reduce oil prices and lower the cost of gas here at home.
That means encouraging alternative energies like wind, solar, biofuels and geothermal, Mr. McCain lectured the freshman senator. But it also means "we need more nuclear power. It means we need clean coal technology. And that means we need to offshore-drill for oil and natural gas. We need to drill here and we need to drill now," the Arizonan said Monday.
"And anybody who says that we can achieve energy independence without using and increasing these existing energy resources either doesn't have the experience to understand the challenge we face or isn't giving the American people some straight talk," he said.
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