Where should I direct my anger?

I just filled up my tank and paid $4.20 a gallon. I am trying to decide who I should be angry with.

I saw Congress whip the oil executives recently about profits, but after checking the facts, I can't be mad at them. They make about a 9 percent profit on sales which is slightly below the Fortune 500 average. They make between 10-20 cents of profit on that $4.20 a gallon price I paid. Plus they risk billions of dollars in exploring for oil and making gas for that profit. I will bet that those congressmen make better then 9 percent profit on their investments and Starbucks makes more profit on a cup of coffee then the oil companies do on a gallon of gas. And federal and state taxes on gas add far more to a gallon of gas then the profit the oil companies make.

Then I read recently that the US has 500 years of oil, gas, and coal resources within our country which we are not taking advantage of. I have read estimates that say if we could tap our own energy resources and announce a strategic goal to reduce our dependence on foreign oil from 70 percent today to 0 percent using our untapped oil and coal resources in five years, the cost of a barrel of oil could be cut in half as the oil countries suddenly had to get competitive to sell their oil.

But we can't do that because Congress has forbidden oil companies to get the oil that is under our ground and under our waters. So you and I are paying $4.20 a gallon because congress thinks it is more important to protect one tenth of one percent of Anwar in Alaska which nobody will ever see (I have been to the Arctic, there is nobody there!). Are you OK with that?

Bottom line, because of the taxes that they nail us with and their refusal to allow us to utilize the energy resources that we could control, Congress is the cause of $4.20 gas. No wonder they try to shift the blame to the oil companies on TV. Now I know who to be angry with!

Randall Rossi

Grayslake