With gas prices spiking again, it’s amazing to watch the lengths to which Democrats will still go to prevent domestic energy production which could help lower prices, promote energy independence, and create jobs.

Just yesterday WKBW in Buffalo, NY, reported, “U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer Sunday called on the U.S. State Department to press the government of Saudi Arabia to publicly and unequivocally promise to increase its oil production . . . .” Schumer, the New York Democrat who spearheads messaging for the Senate majority, said, “These skyrocketing fuel prices are directly linked to the global energy market . . . . To address this situation, I urge the State Department to work with government of Saudi Arabia to increase its oil production . . . .” Schumer even pointed out that “lower production levels have a negative impact on global markets.”

And yet Democrats have blocked or delayed development of oil and gas production in the United States for years. Recall back in 2008 when gas prices spiked and Republicans were trying to pass a bill to expand responsible offshore drilling. Senate Democrats continually objected, including then-Sen. Ken Salazar (D-CO), now Secretary of the Interior in the Obama administration. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell tried to get the bill passed, even asking if Democrats would agree to pass the bill only if gas prices reached $5 a gallon. Still, Salazar objected, calling the energy production the bill would have allowed, “a phantom solution.”

And now, Sen. Schumer is asking Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to get Saudi Arabia to increase oil production instead of asking President Obama to approve the Keystone XL pipeline which would increase oil supplies in the United States and allow the country to get more oil from our friends in Canada. Why aren’t Democrats asking for the shovel-ready American energy jobs the Keystone XL pipeline would create?

In a must-read editorial today, The Wall Street Journal notes that Transcanada, the company trying to build Keystone XL, has decided it can’t wait on Democrats and the Obama White House any longer and will begin building a portion of the pipeline from Oklahoma to Texas. Amazingly, President Obama, weeks after rejecting Transcanada’s permit to build the full pipeline, is now embracing this partial construction.

The WSJ editors write, “President Obama claims that voters aren’t stupid about gas prices, but then they’d have to be to understand his energy policy. Try to parse the latest turn—make that backward triple somersault with two twists—in the Keystone XL pipeline saga. Yesterday TransCanada announced that it plans to break up the $7.6 billion project into several stand-alone parts, beginning immediately with a leg connecting Cushing, Oklahoma with the Gulf Coast. The original plan was to connect U.S. refiners with Alberta’s oil sands crude and other Canadian and U.S. energy resources, but to mollify the environmental lobby Mr. Obama’s State Department refused to issue the cross-border permits last month.

Now, apparently, it’s time to mollify the Administration’s union supporters that favored the thousands of jobs that the shovel-ready Keystone would have thrown off—not to mention the many not-so-stupid voters who’ve noticed Mr. Obama’s antijobs politics. The White House immediately put out a statement claiming that ‘The President welcomes today’s news’ and even that ‘we support the company’s interest in proceeding with this project.’ In other words, Mr. Obama is simultaneously opposing and supporting the Keystone XL. The only problem is that he hasn’t had a change of heart on the important part. The new side-project will help alleviate some of the bottlenecks around Cushing, but it doesn’t do anything to get oil from Canada to the U.S., which is the main point of the pipeline.”

Related:

63% Believe Reducing Dependence on Foreign Oil More Important Than Low Gas Prices

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