Letters To Senator John Warner And Senator James Webb Concerning The OPEC Accountability Act

The Senate will soon be voting on a resolution to file a lawsuit against OPEC. The bill is called the "OPEC Accountability Act" and it is without a doubt one of the most idiotic pieces of legislation to ever come out of this Dem controlled Congress.

As such, I have written my Senators (John Warner and James Webb) asking them to vote against this foolishness. The following is a copy of my letter. Feel free to copy it, paste it to a word document and send it to your own Senators.

Dear [Senator], I am writing this letter to ask you to vote “Nay” on an upcoming bill (S. 2976 IS) that was introduced by Senator Lautenberg and co-sponsored by Senators Dorgan, Casey, Levin, Sanders and Clinton. This bill is known as the “OPEC Accountability Act.” The co-sponsors of this bill claim that launching a lawsuit against OPEC will somehow bring down the price of crude oil and in turn reduce the price of gasoline. I’m sorry, but only a fool would believe such claims. The price of gasoline has gone up for many reasons, most of which can be attributed to the policies enacted into law by this very Congress. For example, the mandate of using ethanol, despite its supporters’ promise of bringing down gas prices, actually drove the price of gasoline up as it also drove up the price of food. The end result: people now have to pay more at the pump in order to get to the store to pay more for food. Further, there was also a promise of lower carbon emissions, but since it requires the burning of 1.5 gallons of petro-chemicals to produce a single gallon of ethanol, that promise was nothing more than fantasy as well. But I digress. The main reason for the high price of oil is simple supply and demand. Nations that have been aggressively developing the industrial sectors of their economies (India and China) have been using more and more oil which means demand has gone up. As any first year economics student knows, when demand goes up, so do prices. But, when demand goes up and supply does not keep pace, or even goes down, prices rise even faster. Many of your peers are trying to blame the oil companies for the situation in the world market, a few of them ignorantly throwing out the charge of “price gouging.” However, the oil companies’ profit margin is well under the average profit margin for other commodities, the market traders of which are not being accused of price gouging. This means that no price gouging is taking place. As such, if Congress carries out its threat to raise taxes on the oil companies in response to this mythical price gouging, the price at the pump will sky-rocket even further. As you can clearly see, Senator, it is the Congress that has been hurting the American people at the gas pump, not OPEC or any of the oil companies. And finally, I need to ask the obvious. Why would members of this Congress actively try to damage our relations with OPEC nations by filing a lawsuit when those same members of Congress are criticizing the President for damaging our relations with these OPEC nations? Wouldn’t you consider that to be hypocritical? When S. 2976 IS reaches the Senate floor for a vote, please do the right thing and vote “Nay.” Thank you. Sincerely, [Your name here]