Pelosi needs to follow her hero Tip

By Kevin Ferris

“The speaker of the House I most admire is Tip O’Neill. Despite their differences, he was able to work in a bipartisan way with President Reagan to save Social Security. This was possible because they were both willing to listen and to compromise.”

So says Speaker Nancy Pelosi in her new book “Know Your Power: A Message to America’s Daughters,” a tome as thin as her record in Congress. Pelosi spent the last three weeks promoting her book in stores around the country and on cable gabfests.

Ironically, she couldn’t get out of Washington fast enough last month for fear of being run down by the bipartisan “Let’s Drill Express.” Pelosi is well aware that if it comes to a vote, Democrats will join Republicans in supporting a package that calls for offshore drilling, developing U.S. shale oil resources, expanding nuclear power, constructing new refineries, and promoting energy-efficient buildings and vehicles and alternative energy production.

But Nancy Pelosi wasn’t able to work in a bipartisan way.

She wasn’t willing to listen — to her House colleagues or the 70 percent to 80 percent of the American people who want offshore drilling as part of a comprehensive energy plan.

She wasn’t willing to compromise.

Imminent defeat

So the speaker in distress undid the ropes tying her to imminent defeat on offshore drilling and hopped a freight out of town. (The up side: Gas prices are down since the Dems left the Capitol to the GOP House, who stayed to protest the inaction on an energy bill.)

“Since I’ve become speaker, my flagship issue has been energy security and addressing the global climate crisis.”

On the speaker’s “flagship issue,” Congress has agreed to suspend the filling of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (this is for emergencies, not talking points), a farm bill that commits more to biofuels (which helps raise food prices), and an energy act that increases fuel efficiency standards. And for all the good of the last measure, Pelosi is tripped up by her own talking points.

“New drilling won’t lower prices for years to come,” her Web site says.

Yet look at her act’s target dates: 2030 on greenhouse gas emissions, 2022 on more biofuels, and 2020 on auto fuel efficiency.

Why not just admit that it will take a variety of long-term energy initiatives — including drilling — to solve the country’s energy problems?

“Energy independence is a national security, economic, environmental, health and moral issue.”

On this grave “moral issue,” Pelosi Co. have offered what the Economist magazine recently called “an incoherent mish-mash” of policies. GOP calls to suspend the gas tax were panned, too.

There’s the “use it or lose it” plan on oil leases, which duplicates current law and ignores the pre-drilling investments and efforts on leased lands. “The notion that oil companies are just sitting on oil leases is a myth,” a Washington Post editorial said last week.

Tax breaks

Then there’s revoking oil company tax breaks — or the windfall profits tax urged by Barack Obama. “Any measure that reduces oil firms’ margins in America is likely to have the effect of diverting at least some investment to other countries — and so exacerbate the shortage of fuel produced at home,” the Economist warns.

Despite the moral imperative on energy, Pelosi dismisses offshore drilling on her Web site: “America has only 1.6 percent of the world’s oil supply, but we use 24 percent — so drilling isn’t much of a solution at all.”

No, drilling alone won’t solve all energy ills, but it will help. Heritage Foundation analyst Ben Lieberman estimates that the 19.1 billion barrels of oil in the off-limits, offshore areas is the “equivalent of 30 years of current imports from Saudi Arabia.”

Support our own industries and send less cash overseas. The horror!

“The planet is God’s creation and we have a moral responsibility to preserve it.”

There’s also a responsibility to recognize how the oil industry has improved since the bans on offshore drilling were first raised in the 1970s.

X Kevin Ferris is commentary page editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.