Analysis of a Crack Whore.
Cheney, who leaves Sunday, will meet with King Abdullah in Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil producer and the de facto leader of OPEC.
"Obviously, we want to see an increase in production," said Dana Perino, an administration spokeswoman. "The president does want OPEC to take into consideration that its biggest customer, the United States - our economy has weakened and part of the reason is because of higher oil prices. We think that more supply would help, and I don't anticipate that the vice president would have any other message than that one."
The Bush administration is struggling to revive an American economy that is sagging under the weight of a housing slump, rising prices and a credit crisis, and it has had little luck persuading OPEC to increase production levels.
At a meeting Wednesday in Vienna, OPEC rebuffed a Bush statement two days earlier calling for increased output.
My job, as the President of the country, is to put pro-growth policies in place. But we're dependent upon oil, and so as our economy grows, it's going to create more demand for oil -- same with China, same with India, same with other growing countries. It should be obvious to you all that the demand is outstripping supply, which causes prices to go up. And it's making it harder here in America for working families to save, and for farmers to be prosperous, and for small businesses to grow.
The dependency upon oil also puts us at the mercy of terrorists. If there's tight supply and demand, all it requires is one terrorist disruption of oil and that price goes even higher. It's in our interests to end our dependency on oil because it -- that dependency presents a challenge to our national security. In 1985, 20 percent of America's oil came from abroad. Today that number is nearly 60 percent.
Now, all the countries we import from are friendly, stable countries; but some countries we get oil from don't particularly like us. They don't like the form of government that we embrace. They don't believe in the same freedoms we believe in, and that's a problem from a national security perspective, for the United States and any other nation that values its economic sovereignty and national sovereignty.
THE PRESIDENT: I talked about some -- some of the breaks. And this is a -- this generally is a tax increase, and it doesn't make any sense to do it right now. We need to be exploring for more oil and gas. And taking money out of the coffers of the oil companies will make it harder for them to reinvest. I know -- they say, well, look at all of the profits. Well, we're raising the price of gasoline in a time when the price of gasoline is high.
(...)
Again, I repeat, if you look at what's happened in corn out there, you're beginning to see the food issue and the energy issue collide. And so, to me, the best dollar spent is to continue to deal with cellulosic ethanol in order to deal with this bottleneck right now. And secondly, the tax -- yes, I said that a while ago -- on certain aspects, but the way I analyze this bill is it's going to cost the consumers more money. And we need more oil and gas being explored for; we need more drilling; we need less dependence on foreign oil.
Reduce, gimme, reduce, gimme, reduce, gimme.
Posted by kerry at March 11, 2008 08:31 AM