An Open Letter to the US Senate

To the United States Senate,

Today I saw the most shameful display of greed, dishonesty, and hypocrisy I've ever seen in nearly 40 years of life when you were grilling executives from oil companies. After seeing the footage, I'm left with one question.

How dare you accuse oil companies of gouging customers?

I know, it's just politics, and I'm sure you think you're "sticking up for the little guy" with your grandstanding (and in Senator Durbin's case, blubbering like a little girl with a scraped knee), but in truth you have the power to drop gas prices tomorrow with a single bill that I guarantee President Bush will sign. And it won't be a meager two or three cents, either. It will be a major drop in prices.

Cut all gasoline taxes, state and federal, effective immediately until oil prices come back down.

Now, before you start saying that roads and bridges will fail if we don't have those taxes in place, let me remind you that there's a bridge in Minnesota that fell while we had gas taxes in place. You know why the bridge fell? Gravity, but also neglect caused by...misappropriation of funds. Yes, dear Senators, the money from the gas taxes that you say we can't do without isn't getting to roads or bridges.

Besides, I'm sure you could find money in the existing budget that isn't being used for anything. Just put it towards improving bridges and roads. Oh, and by the way, Social Security funds are off limits. Let's just say whatever doesn't get spent on roads and bridges goes back into Social Security to repay the IOUs you took out.

Let me also point out that you don't need to "pay for" this gas tax holiday. If you truly gave one-tenth of one crap about working people, you would have passed the gas tax holiday by now. But you haven't. You've been too busy laying it on thick and blaming Big Oil for daring to make a profit in their chosen profession. But here's the twist. Seems the evil Big Oil makes less than a dime in profit off every gallon of gas purchased. But there's something that makes over fifty cents off every gallon of gas purchased, and it's all profit. What would you call such a heartless group making money hand over fist as people struggle to make ends meet? What would you say to them?

Here's a clue. You can look in the mirror or look over at the Senator you're sitting next to because it's you.

Now, go do something about gas prices besides complaining. Oh, and see what you can do to keep Dick Durbin away from a microphone.

Sincerely,

Thomas Lindaman