Earlier today I spent about $60 to fill up the car. That isn’t news to drivers these days. Those with larger engines and gas tanks spend a lot more than me. The devil of it is that it’s something that shouldn’t have happened. We’re in a pickle that may take a while to get out of—if we ever do.

Liberals in Congress have passed laws and prevented new laws from passing that prevent us from using our own resources, thus forcing us to obtain oil from foreign producers. To boot, they seem quite happy with themselves for doing it.  Kevin McCullough wrote recently, “[Liberal Senators] have the gall to do all of this under the guise of feigned outrage at oil companies in addition to self-superior Senate floor speeches where they rage against the administration. They also express abject resentment towards anyone who dares to mention the obvious - that it is their policies that put us in this mess to begin with and disallows our escape from it.”

Whenever the subject of drilling for oil on our own territory comes up, the first place mentioned is ANWR, the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge, located about 100 miles east of Prudhoe Bay on Alaska’s North Slope. Various bills to allow drilling there have passed the House over the years, only to be defeated by the Senate. The only time a bill passed both houses, it was vetoed by Bill Clinton in 1995. GOP candidate John McCain is saying that he will refuse to allow drilling in ANWR because it’s pristine. Maybe he thinks it’s a good place to take the wife and kids for vacation. After all, it’s only about 3000 miles from here, but no airline that goes there. Plus, there’s no place to stay and nothing to see once you’re there apart from a few indignant caribou.

 Besides ANWR, there are other places offshore that hold vast reserves of oil and gas, but those areas are also off limits. Again, liberals in Congress have done a number on us.

Consider this, written by James M. Taylor, which was published by The Heartland Institute, and appeared in 2006. “The presence of Chinese oil rigs, there by agreement with Cuba, within view of the Florida coastline has irked state residents. Cuba has announced it will expand those operations.

"I saw all kinds of wells with Chinese writing on them just south of the Keys," Leonard Gropper, a Marathon, Florida retiree, told the June 20 Orlando Sun-Sentinel.

With just 90 miles separating Cuba and the Florida Keys, Cuba has legal rights to oil and natural gas reserves in its half of the Florida Strait. Cuba can, therefore, produce or lease for production oil and natural gas reserves as close as 45 miles from U.S. shores.

"China is trying to lock up resources around the world, and they are locking up resources in our own backyard where we can't even compete and play ball," Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) told the Sun-Sentinel. "This is simply wrong. I've had enough, and I believe the American people have had enough."

The Chinese are drilling within sight of the Florida coast while we have placed the waters on our side of the line off limits to drilling.  That’s outrageous! “There’s something screwy around here,” to quote Elmer Fudd.

To make it worse, Congress and the lobbyist groups that pay them have put in place so much red tape and prohibitive regulations that we haven’t built a new refinery in 30 years.

Maybe obstructive members of Congress think the oil companies and Detroit have a warehouse full of those miracle gismos that they bought up to keep them off the market, you know, the ones you see in cheap magazines that advertise “the device that the oil companies don’t want you to know about.” Once the price of gas gets so high that people can’t go to work, EXXON will produce the gizmos that let your car run on water and sell them to the public at discount prices. Whatever Congress is thinking, they really aren’t thinking. It may be time to turn them all out and start over.