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Gas prices fact check: Six ideas in Congress, but can they work?

Soaring gas prices have also shown a consistent and significant ability to push members of Congress over the deep end. Here's the experts' take on 6 ideas floating through Congress.

6. Craft a comprehensive energy policy

Jacquelyn Martin/AP
Sen. John Hoeven (R) of North Dakota speaks about rising gas prices last month during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington.

  • By David Grant Staff writer

Both parties latch on to a sort of “Field of Dreams” mentality around energy prices: If you build it – whether it’s gas rigs in the Gulf of Mexico or wind turbines on the planes of Texas – gas prices will come down. Global markets will realize the US is “serious” about energy independence and energy prices will fall, they say.

“We need to send a strong message that we’re prepared to do the right things to do something about this,” Sen. John Hoeven (R) of North Dakota told reporters last week. “Good policy, if you announce it and show commitment to it, impacts that world marketplace. If you send that message out there long before you actually get the energy.... It does make a difference.”

Perhaps, says Ken Green, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI). But in the short term, it's only a small difference

“They can nibble around the edges with that kind of policy,” he says.

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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