'Our energy policy wasn't effective, and now we're paying the price'

President George W. Bush, at a press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe de Jesus Calderon during the North American Leaders Summit in New Orleans on Apr. 22, in response to a reporter's question about whether soaring crude oil prices are going to erode Bush's economic stimulus package:

"[There's] no question rising gasoline prices are like a tax on our working people. What's happening is that we've had an energy policy that neglected hydrocarbons in the United States for a long period of time, and now we're paying the price.

"We should have been exploring for oil and gas in [the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge], for example. But, no, we made the decision – our Congress kept preventing us from opening up new areas to explore in environmentally friendly ways. And now we're becoming, as a result, more and more dependent on foreign sources of oil.

"Fortunately, Canada and Mexico are our biggest providers, for which we are grateful. But our energy policy . . . wasn't effective over the past decades, and now we're paying the price.

"Secondly, there's not a lot of excess capacity in the world. As a matter of fact, unfortunately, a lot of the supplies are coming from parts of the world where there's political instability. Fortunately, again, Canada and Mexico are not included in that group. There are some countries that are not reinvesting in their reserves, which decline without maintenance.

"So I'm obviously concerned for our consumers. [That's] all the more reason to have passed a rebate, tax relief. And all the more reason for the United States Congress to keep the tax relief I passed permanent. We got people out there campaigning, 'Well, we're just going to tax the rich.' You can't raise enough money to meet their spending appetites by taxing the so-called rich.

"Every one of those so-called 'tax the rich' schemes ends up taxing the middle class families. And in a time of economic uncertainty we need tax certainty. In a time of rising gasoline prices, we need to be sending a message to all Americans: We're not going to raise your taxes."

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