Dems fend off energy attacks

Senate Democrats played offense on energy policy during their weekly radio address while President Bush used his national radio time to rebut criticism of his Afghanistan policy.

Democrats are scrambling to respond to a summer of Republican attacks over record-level gas prices and their longstanding opposition to drilling.

{mosads}Bush and Republicans, meanwhile, are responding to charges by Democratic nominee Barack Obama (D-Ill.) that the military focus on Iraq has allowed the security threat posed by al Qaeda to fester.

“We consume 25 percent of the world’s oil, but we have less than 3 percent of the world’s oil reserves,” said Sen. Ken Salazar (Colo.), who delivered the weekly Democratic radio address on Saturday. “We simply can’t drill our way to energy independence.”

“Yet that was the only idea that John McCain and his friends at the Republican national convention offered,” he said, in reference to the Arizona Senator who accepted the GOP nomination this month.

Salazar stressed Democratic support for developing a myriad of energy sources to relieve the nation’s dependence on foreign oil, citing biofuels, wind, solar, hydrogen and geothermal energy.

“Drill baby, drill,” emerged as a mantra from the GOP convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, reflecting the success Republicans have enjoyed pressing Democrats on high gas prices.

GOP strategists claim they made political gains after gas broke the $4-a-gallon barrier in May.

House Democrats have responded by crafting an energy bill that could greatly expand offshore drilling and that would also provide incentives for renewable energies.

Republicans, however, have criticized the package because it would not allow coastal states to share in an estimated $2.6 trillion in tax revenue from drilling.
 
House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) has declared the bill will result in little new domestic energy production because states lack incentive to open drilling fields within 100 miles of their shores.

Democrats hope to spin GOP opposition to their energy package as a narrow-minded reliance on fossil fuels and paint Republicans as too cozy with oil companies.

Bush meanwhile used his national media time to rebut charges that he has not paid enough attention al Qaeda and Taliban militants along the Afghan-Pakistani border.

“In Afghanistan, where the 9/11 attacks were planned, our men and women in uniform toppled the Taliban regime, destroyed al Qaeda camps, and liberated more than 25 million Afghans,” Bush said in an address marking the seventh anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“America is also on the offense against terrorists and extremists in Iraq. Since we launched the surge last year, violence has fallen to its lowest levels since the spring of 2004,” Bush said.

Obama criticized Bush this week for not sending more troops to Afghanistan sooner. Obama has also reminded voters that the Bush administration has failed to kill or capture Osama bin Laden.

Taliban attacks against American and allied forces in Afghanistan have grown more audacious in recent months. This year has been the deadliest for American troops in the country since the 2001 invasion.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) Friday charged that Bush had implemented the “worst foreign policy of our nation’s history,” citing “military experts, historians and countless authors.”

Bush has directed a Marine battalion scheduled to deploy in Iraq to deploy in Afghanistan instead. Bush said an Army combat brigade would follow the Marines in January.