McConnell Bashes Pelosi’s Oil Plan

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) attacked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) plan to lower gas prices Wednesday, calling her proposal “silly” and “absurd.”

“Nobody’s going to believe that any of these proposals they’re talking about are real,” McConnell said on Fox. “That silly proposal to open up 10 percent of the Strategic Reserve is about three and a half days worth of oil.”

Pelosi asked President Bush earlier this week to release a “small portion” of the more than 700 million barrels of oil currently being held in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

McConnell, like Bush, favors a lifting of drilling bans offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

“We’re sitting on a sea of oil, both onshore and offshore,” McConnell said. “We know what to do. We need to go about it.”

Pelosi has called the GOP plan to lift drilling bans a “hoax.”

“It will neither reduce gas prices nor increase energy independence. It just gives millions more acres to the same companies that are sitting on nearly 68 million acres of public lands and coastal areas,” Pelosi said Monday.