Blaming Congress For His Failures

by Steve Soto

Reuters photo of the Great Prevaricator today

With consumer confidence in him falling through the floor, Bush blamed Congress today for delaying help to consumers to deal with oil prices that have more than tripled during his time in office.

With a straight face, he tells the gullible press corps that things would have been better if only Congress had allowed him to turn over decommissioned military bases to Big Oil as sites for new refineries, even though:

1) Oil companies have already said this is a nonstarter;
2) Oil companies created the refining shortage themselves to drive up prices.

He's been in office over seven years and has been more active playing wartime president than he ever has been on the issue of domestic exploration and refining, or more importantly moving us away from oil towards alternatives. His administration has put all its efforts into using the military to seize supplies, even though it now appears that non-OPEC capacity is topped out and even OPEC can't catch up with demand from India and China, which are gobbling up supplies and driving up prices for all countries tethered to oil.

Mr. President, a late push for unwanted refinery locations on military bases won't do anything to cheapen oil anytime between now and 2013, but why should you care when you planned all along to let the markets drive your energy policy, and to dump this problem onto your successor? Given your limited world view, nothing you have proposed over the last several years would have made any difference, and your party ran Congress up until 2007. But now it's the fault of Congress that:

1) You can't even bring yourself to use the word "recession";
2) You still have no energy policy seven years into your tenure;
3) Your administration denied any economic troubles as late as March;
4) You easily dump $12 billion/mo. into Iraq, but not for extended unemployment benefits;
5) You will leave office as a total failure.

Yup, it's everyone else's fault and never yours.