Worried about the rapid rise in the price of gas? Well, Barack Obama has some advice for you. Quit griping:

You’re building trucks that use less oil. And you know that’s especially important right now because most of you have probably filled up your gas tank a time or two in the last week, and you’ve seen how quickly the price of gas is going up. A lot of you may have to drive a distance to work. Higher gas prices are like a tax straight out of your paycheck.  And for companies that operate a whole fleet of trucks, the higher costs can make a big difference in terms of the profitability of the company.

Now, here’s the thing, though — this is not the first time we’ve seen gas prices spike. It’s been happening for years. Every year, about this time, gas starts spiking up, and everybody starts wondering, how high is it going to go? And every year, politicians start talking when gas prices go up. They get out on the campaign trail — and you and I both know there are no quick fixes to this problem — but listening to them, you’d think there were.

Well, here’s the thing — this isn’t the first time we’ve heard a President claim that there are no quick fixes to the problem of dependency on foreign oil and supply shocks.  When Republicans pressed Bill Clinton to open up ANWR and offshore drilling, Clinton responded that it would take years for such a policy to deliver enough supply to matter.  When George Bush tried to get a Democratic Congress to agree to open ANWR, Democrats said it would take years for such a policy to deliver enough supply to matter.  Now that Barack Obama’s in the White House, he says that increased domestic production by opening up long-restricted areas would take too long to deliver enough supply to matter.

When it comes to energy policy, accessing our own vast stores of oil and natural gas isn’t a “quick fix” — it’s a long term policy that creates economic growth, national security, and jobs.  And if Democrats had concerned themselves with those issues almost 20 years ago, we wouldn’t have had prices “spiking up … every year, about this time.”  Telling people to shrug it off simply because it keeps happening is kind of like proposing trillion-dollar deficits each year rather than getting serious about spending cuts and responsible budgeting.  Oh, yeah …

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Illustrations by Chris Muir of Day by Day. Be sure to read the adventures of Sam, Zed, Damon, and Jan every day!