Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Congressional blowhards

We can stop worrying about high gasoline prices now that Congress is riding to the rescue . . . in eight-cylinder gas guzzlers.

Just the other day House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., led a troop of lawmakers to a BP station near the Capitol to bloviate on fuel efficiency. In a show of self-sacrifice, Hastert chose a compact hydrogen-powered car for the return trip. Or so it seemed. Cameras caught the rotund speaker switching back to his Suburban SUV (15 miles per gallon) a block away.

Then there's Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., a frequent critic of Republican energy policies. "Since George Bush and Dick Cheney took over . . . gas prices have doubled," Boxer exhorted, then jumped into her Chrysler LHS (18 mpg) for a one-block ride back to her office, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank reported.

After a tough morning debating gas prices, senators headed for lunch: John Sununu, R-N.H., in a GMC Yukon (14 mpg); Ben Nelson, D-Neb., in an eight-cylinder Ford Explorer (14 mpg); and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., in a Chrysler minivan (18 mpg), according to Milbank's account.

Party affiliation wasn't a good predictor of vehicle choice. Richard Lugar, the Republican senator from Indiana, was picked up in a Toyota Prius (60 mpg) but his Democratic counterpart, Evan Bayh, rode shotgun in a Dodge Durango V8 (14 mpg).

Then there is President Bush, who commiserated with a customer filling up his truck at a Biloxi, Miss., gas station, noting that high gas prices are "like a tax." Bush then returned to Washington in Air Force One (.2 mpg) and rejected calls for a windfall profits tax on oil companies.

There's enough hot air about gas prices coming out of Washington to make a windmill farm on the National Mall promising.

[Last modified April 29, 2006, 09:17:54]