Angie Craig: “the Senator from Mississippi counseled me to stay calm. I am a reasonably calm guy. I don't get too excited about much…”

“the Senator from Mississippi counseled me to stay calm. I am a reasonably calm guy. I don't get too excited about much of anything--at least that is what my wife would suggest. But let me tell you something that happened to me last night that caused me to be a little less than calm. I drove, like most Americans, to a gas station. I pulled up to the pump, I swiped my credit card, and $39 later I filled an economy car full of $3.25 per gallon gas. I must tell you and tell the Senator from Mississippi, I wasn't calm. This Scotchman's blood began to rile a bit when I realized that I and all other Americans are paying more for their gas today than ever in the history of this country and it is Government policy that caused it. It is an attitude over the last 20 years that somehow America was going to conserve its way out of this problem. We didn't have to produce, we didn't have to refine, and, by the way, you can go out and buy a bigger car and it will burn a little more, but don't worry about it, it will be there. We lulled ourselves into this sense of false security that somehow gas is always going to stay at $1.25 or $2 a gallon. While we were in a sense of false security, we did something else that was politically stupid. Where the greatest potential for domestic oil production exists today, we said take it out of bounds, take it offline.…”