For example, let's concede his talking point on new drilling. Just give it to him up front. The real question behind that is - what makes Walberg think that Big Oil will invest in physical operations, when currently they sink 55 percent of their money into the stock market, and only spend in the "mid-single digits" towards finding new deposits?
No one questions that Big Oil is rolling in cash. The cash the biggest oil companies bring in from running their businesses, or operating cash flow, is four times what it was in the early 1990s.
"It becomes a management decision," said Howard Silverblatt, a senior index analyst at Standard & Poor's. "It's not like they're going to the board and saying, 'Well, I can do one or the other or the other.' The balance sheets are flush with cash."
So what's Big Oil to do?
The companies say they are doing what they can to find more fossil fuels around the world, but the easy oil is gone. Exploring these days may mean expensive projects in thousands of feet of water in the Gulf of Mexico or costly ventures pulling petroleum from Canada's vast oil-sands deposits.
Even if we opened up new areas to drilling, there is no guarantee the oil companies would actually drill. They have shareholders that they answer to, not the consumer, and they have made it clear that is their priority. Wonder what Tim would say about that.
You also might want to ask him why he voted against lowering gas prices. A release from the reserves in the past has had an immediate effect on raising supplies, and that in turn has cooled the market. Granted, this is not a long-term solution, but it would help to curb the increasing inflationary pressures on products that are happening due to high energy costs that, coupled with the housing crisis, are curbing consumer spending in all areas and are pushing the nation's economy towards recession.
Walberg on Thursday voted against a bill that would have required the Energy Department to release 70 million of the 706 million barrels of oil stockpiled in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a network of underground caverns along the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico. The 70 million barrels would have been replaced with a heavier grade oil, keeping the emergency reserve at capacity.
The bill failed, but proponents argued it would have put a bunch of oil on the market and, as a result of natural supply-and-demand logic, necessitated a lowering of gasoline prices across the country. That's how it worked with past releases in 1991, 2000 and 2005.
If there was ever a time for a strategic release, it's probably now. Why won't the Republicans help out regular people and our economy? Because they are more interested in giving Big Oil more breaks before they are ushered out of office. No other reason is plausible; the excuse from Bush about "an emergency" doesn't fly when the reserves will be replaced. Dick Durbin spells it out in no uncertain terms.
Top Senate Democrats also charge that Republicans are more interested in helping oil companies than finding solutions to high gas prices.
"Now they want to give them [the oil companies] a big, fat, sloppy smooch as they leave office by extending millions of acres for drilling across the United States and the outer continental shelf," said Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Senate Democratic whip. "It isn't going to happen."
Ask Tim why he wants to help the oil companies rather than the consumers. Ask Tim why they won't drill in the untapped space they have now. Ask Tim why he would vote against a measure that would help ease inflationary pressures on our economy and your wallet.
And just for fun, ask Tim to "check the oil" while he's pumping your gas today. It might be good for a laugh.