"News Flash": Drill, baby, drill won't work

There were a lot of things that disgusted me about the Republican convention--generally centering on playing loose with facts, mean-spiritedness and hypocrisy.  This is one of them, captured in my latest "letter to the editor".  More to be covered in upcoming posts.

John McCain, in his nomination acceptance speech, decried the incompetence of his own party over the past eight years. At the same time, he smiled gleefully in response to his Republican delegates’ chants of “drill, baby, drill”. Electing John McCain President will ensure four more years of incompetence, because he so willingly ignores the facts.

The United States has 2% of the world’s proven oil reserves, but consumes one-quarter of global oil production. According to the Energy Information Administration, expanded offshore drilling would not have a “significant” impact on oil production for more than two decades. The EIA also predicts that drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Preserve would reduce dependence on foreign oil, by 2030, only “slightly”. “News flash” for John McCain and Sarah Palin: we aren’t going to drill our way to energy independence.

According to three Nobel laureates in economics, McCain’s proposed gas tax holiday would generate “major” profits for big oil while doing little to lower prices at the pump. Is that what McCain means by “fighting for you”?

We need an administration and Congress that will make policy decisions based on facts, not chants; an administration which defines “you” as average Americans, not large corporations. That’s why I’m voting for Barack Obama for President and Jim Himes for Congress. They have sensible, fact-based energy policies that will move us towards energy independence, create jobs and wean us off of environmentally harmful fossil fuels. And they will promote energy efficiency and conservation, concepts that McCain and Palin aggressively disdain.

McCain's Economic Illiteracy

By his own admission (to the Wall Street Journal in 2005 and The Boston Globe in 2007, see John McCain on Meet the Press) John McCain is not an expert on economic policy. If anybody doubts this, he proved it with his remarks about the recent employment report. In response to the loss of 80,000 jobs in March, McCain, in a  press release, called for lower taxes and less regulation as a solution to creating job growth.

Under the current administration, overall federal income tax rates are at historically low levels. Yet the overall growth rate of private sector employment during George W. Bush’s administration is the second worst performance since World War II (his dad gets honors for the worst performance). Contrast this with the Clinton record, where despite tax increases, job growth outpaced Bush’s record by a factor of four. This certainly dispels the Republican mantra that the only way to grow the economy is by cutting taxes.

As for less regulation, the cause of the current financial market distress appears to be completely lost on the Republican nominee for president. More, not less, regulatory oversight of the subprime mortgage market could have reigned in the excesses of the imprudent lending and financing practices that are the very cause of the economic downturn that McCain believes less regulation would alleviate.

Regulation serves the purpose of policing markets where the actions of individual players can harm more than just themselves. Surely the current situation, where the reckless actions of companies like Bear Stearns are driving the economy into recession and seriously threatening the stability of financial markets, is proof positive of the need for regulation.

So when John McCain says “The American people cannot afford the Democrats and their economic leadership”, you might want to think twice. It’s time to put somebody in the White House who will put aside dogma in favor of an informed economic policy. Clearly that person is not John McCain.