Drill. No Ceremony

One of the issues Americans will carry into the voting booth this fall will be the high price of gasoline. The candidate that comes up with the most cogent solution stands a good chance of winning the White House.

On one hand, we have a significant pillar of Barack Obama's energy plan. He wants to punish the oil companies by creating a windfall profits tax.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama sought to tap into Americans' anxiety over high gasoline prices by pledging to seek a windfall profits tax on U.S. oil companies if elected.

"I'll make oil companies like Exxon pay a tax on their windfall profits, and we'll use the money to help families pay for their skyrocketing energy costs and other bills," the Illinois senator said on Monday according to Reuters.

This is consistent with traditional liberal ideology, in that they think they can tax their way out of a problem. Got a problem? Create a tax. But what Sen. Obama is not telling us is who ultimately will pay the tax. Anytime a tax is levied on a company, it is passed on to the consumer. Taxes are costs and built into the price, the consumer pays. So to solve the high gas price quandary, his solution is for us to pay more.

Note to Obama - This does not help. The Robin Hood approach will not solve the problem in the short term and will only create more problems for the long-term.

On the other hand, John McCain has unveiled his energy plan.

Sen. John McCain called yesterday for an end to the federal ban on offshore oil drilling, offering an aggressive response to high gasoline prices and immediately drawing the ire of environmental groups that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee has courted for months.

The move is aimed at easing voter anger over rising energy prices by freeing states to open vast stretches of the country's coastline to oil exploration. In a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, nearly 80 percent said soaring prices at the pump are causing them financial hardship, the highest in surveys this decade.

"We must embark on a national mission to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil," McCain told reporters yesterday. In a speech today, he plans to add that "we have untapped oil reserves of at least 21 billion barrels in the United States. But a broad federal moratorium stands in the way of energy exploration and production. . . . It is time for the federal government to lift these restrictions."

There is no magical solution to this problem. As long as we are dependent on oil for energy, the demand will be high. Add to this the surge in Chinese and Indian demand and you can clearly see that OPEC has the world in a bind. As long as it only costs OPEC a few dollars to pump a barrel of oil while charging $140, they will own the entire developed world. But while flooding the market with non-OPEC oil will certainly make an impact, drilling for new sources will only be part of the answer.

We need to develop new forms of energy. We've done this with ethanol, but silliness has prevailed in the form of using food sources to do it. Common sense tells intelligent people, don't mess with the food supply. And as I watch the floods in the Corn Belt destroy a significant portion of this year's corn crop, I can only surmise that we can expect more rises in the prices of food this year. This is because much of the corn futures are destined to become fuel, not feed for livestock or integral ingredients for many of the foods we eat. Supply down, prices up, this goes for both ethanol and food.

The greater the supply of anything leads to lower prices. Taxes do not. We need to take a good serious look at all forms of energy, not just bio-fuels. All measures that create more sound energy sources should be given a serious look, especially those that will not take food out of our mouths. This will create more choices, for consumers. More choices equals more supplies.

Despite McCain's plan not being a panacea, it is more far sound than Obama's. It is a step in the right direction. If nothing else, it certainly draws a marked distinction between him and his socialist opponent.