HOFMEISTER: I am deliberately being an alarmist--I know that--because I am fearful that the American people are being so mis-served by the political class in this country--and as I said, both Republicans and Democrats--that something has to be done.
The American people have to get a grip on the politicians who refuse to deal with the future needs for energy. Because it is not $5 this summer, guess what? If we stay on the plan we are on, which is no plan whatsoever, we’ll be a $5 next summer or $5.50 the following summer. Or we’ll be standing in gas lines, wondering whatever happened to this country.
We talked about decliner earlier. What ever happened to the country that we are standing in gas lines, because China is sucking up some much of the available oil in the world. And guess what China is doing, which is never reported in this country, China is creating cash loans to state-owned oil companies all over the world, so that they can guarantee the first oil.
It’s over $120 billion of Chinese loans to state-owned oil companies, just in the last three and a half years. They get the oil first from Venezuela. They get the oil first from Nigeria or from Brazil or wherever it is that they are creating these loans. The oil that goes to China pays back the loan. We have no such plan.
Here we are arguing about whether we should or should not drill in our own country. We’re not going to have enough oil to fill the tanks every day of consumers at whatever price it might be.
So, Rex may be correct in the course of the next several months, that the economy could falter because people do not have the money to both buy clothes and books and food and medicine, because they have to get to work every day and the higher price of gasoline, courtesy of the American government, is causing people to choose to not purchase things.
That’s what will take the country back to recession. That’s what will cause higher unemployment. The sooner we get a plan for energy the better off every American will be.