A Saving Attitude

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has remarks in our Dallas Morning News today that show one of the reasons, among many, that we need to increase the Democratic majority in Congress.

In the six years since President Bush took office, the cost to fill up a car in America has more than doubled. In May alone, as we entered the summer travel season, gas prices broke records nationally and in nearly half the states.

Even though Democrats have raised the minimum wage for the first time in a decade, rising fuel costs still take too much out of Americans' paychecks; their effects are felt long after we pull out of the gas station. High prices hinder our nation's economic growth: They echo in the job market, increase our trade deficit and hurt businesses large and small. And our dependence on oil, especially foreign oil, endangers our national security and jeopardizes our environment.

Our current path is undeniably unsustainable: America produces just 3 percent of the world's oil reserves but consumes nearly half its gasoline. Democrats recognize that we have a historic opportunity and responsibility to correct this course, and we have a plan to do just that.

For too long, the Bush administration has made it a priority to give tax breaks to oil and gas companies even as prices at the pump and corporate profits have soared. Democrats have different priorities. Our strategy puts consumers, our economy, our national security and our environment ahead of historic profits.

The plan that Democrats introduced in the U.S. Senate recently will help Americans spend less on gasoline every year and takes major steps forward to cut our oil consumption. Our bill will:

•Mandate the production of clean, renewable fuels here at home, which will create thousands of American jobs.

•Raise the fuel-efficiency standards for new cars and trucks to 35 miles per gallon by 2020.

•Set new energy-efficiency standards for lighting, appliances and federal office buildings and vehicles.

•Protect consumers by punishing companies that price-gouge consumers or manipulate gas supply to pad their profits.

•Fund promising new technologies that make our air and water cleaner.

•Give us more leverage in the global energy market by requiring the president to step up diplomatic efforts to build strategic international partnerships.

The cavalier and wastrel attitude of the Republics has drained our resources and threatens our future, and the future of the planet.

If we cannot get the point across to the public at large that we can't afford to keep Republics irresponsibly wasting our resources of all sort, it is going to mean disaster in our future.