On the recordFebruary 28, 2012
I think it is obvious all around our country that Americans are struggling right now with gasoline prices. The average American family spent more than $4,000 on gasoline last year, and it will be more this year, with the additional devastating price increases we are seeing now that will wreak havoc on our economy. The national average price of a gallon of gasoline has gone up every single day for the last 3 weeks. In many parts of our country, prices at the pump are around $4 a gallon. But instead of encouraging an ``all-of-the-above'' approach, which the administration has said it is doing, the administration, instead, has been frustrating every domestic source of energy production that does not conform to a narrow view of alternative fuels. The President is opposed to increased drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve and opening additional areas of the Outer Continental Shelf off the Alaskan coast. The people of Alaska have voted to support the ANWR drilling because they know ANWR is an area that is the size, approximately, of the State of South Carolina, and the part that would be drilled is approximately the size of Washington National Airport. So they know this would be good jobs for Alaska, and it would not harm the environment at all because the drilling area is so very small in this vast wildlife reserve.…
