George Phillips, Republican candidate for Congress in New York’s 22nd Congressional District, has a four-point plan to stop skyrocketing fuel prices and improve America’s energy infrastructure. In the last year, gasoline prices have risen 35%, while diesel is up 64%. The district, which encompasses much of New York’s Southern Tier and Hudson Valley, has been hit hard, as many residents live on fixed incomes or must commute to New York City, making rising fuel costs especially difficult to bear.

“Oil is sold on a global market, but gasoline and other refined fuels are produced and sold regionally. The answers are in what we do here at home,” Phillips says. “By making common sense policy decisions, we can get prices back under control, provide energy for the future, keep our money here in the United States, and employ more American workers.”

His opponent, incumbent Democrat Maurice Hinchey, has long opposed the most important elements of Phillips’ plan, particularly expanded domestic drilling, which June Rasmussen polling showed to be supported by 67% of Americans.

The Phillips Gasoline Plan:

* Produce more. Drilling for American oil, building new
refineries, and supporting the use of non-traditional sources of
gasoline such as oil shale, oil sands, and coal belts can produce
hundreds of billions of barrels of additional oil, employing
American workers to do it.

* Invest in proven alternatives. Nuclear energy and certain other
alternatives are powerful tools to reduce the portion of our
fossil fuels going to the production of electricity.

* Streamline distribution. Standardizing our numerous formulations
of gasoline will make the process of getting gasoline to consumers
more efficient. Right now, state and federal mandates require
dozens of different local formulations, each of which requires
separate equipment.

* Cut taxes. Cutting the federal gas tax will provide relief to
working families and businesses.

“Nearly everything, even groceries, is more expensive because of these fuel prices,” says Phillips. “If we had no been blocking domestic production for so long, those facilities would be online today.”

The Consumer Price Index reports a 6.6% increase in food prices for 2008, and 4.8% for 2007, compared to only 2.2% in 2006. Overall, the CPI has increased 1.1% in the last month, the biggest increase since 1982. The Department of Labor says that at least two thirds of this increase is a direct result of the rising cost of diesel fuel and other energy sources used to transport and deliver those goods.

“Maurice Hinchey is telling us that he doesn’t think we really need more fossil fuels, that we should all just try to conserve energy until a renewable silver bullet shows up,” Phillips continues. “It’s impossible to conserve enough to outpace this. World demand for energy is going to keep growing, and unless those demands are met, prices will keep going up.”

Hinchey has attempted to deflect anger in his district by asserting that while he agrees we need new refineries, the oil industry doesn’t want to build them. He has even described the idea that refinery construction is held back by the environmental restrictions he supports as “baloney”. However, a recent Wall Street Journal article exploring the issue found numerous proposed refinery projects that have been blocked by restrictions like those Hinchey has supported. Contrary to his recent claims of support for new construction, during the 109th Congress, Hinchey opposed H.R. 3893 (The Gasoline for America’s Security Act) and H.R. 5254 (The Refinery Permit Process Schedule Act), bills designed to accelerate the permitting process for new refinery construction.

Hinchey also says that the oil industry has purchased rights to millions of acres of unused land, enough, he claims, to double domestic production, and that the industry is trying to horde that oil to increase prices. However, his assertion that the land could double production is based on a non-scientific internal report, which erroneously assumes that all leased land will produce as much oil as the land currently in production. In fact, the leases are only for ten year terms, and are purchased prior to exploration. The vast majority of the land is ultimately found not to have useful oil underneath.

“Hinchey is telling us that his solution is to force oil companies to act in the interests of the American people instead of their own, but the oil industry has been struggling to increase production for a long time, and Hinchey has spent his career working to prevent it,” notes Phillips. “The real conflict of interest is between the American people and Maurice Hinchey.”