Congress voted on 7-30-08 whether to adjourn for the August recess or stay in session for votes on offshore oil drilling.
The vote was 213 to adjourn vs. 212 to stay in session.
213 Democrats voted to adjourn.
17 Democrats crossed over and voted with 195 Republicans to stay in session.
Did your Congressperson vote your interest? Check this link to find out and if they voted YEA, let them know how you feel in November if they are up for reelection.
The National Republican Congressional Committee has a new video out titled “Democrats: An Agenda Americans Just Can’t Afford”.
This is the message that the Republicans have to hammer home, especially in August when Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid send Congress home without doing anything to increase domestic production. Rarely has a major issue produced such bipartisan consensus among the electorate, and even more rarely has it produced such obstinacy in the majority party in Congress. Gas price increases hit everyone across the board and make energy policy extremely personal — and the Democrats want to do nothing to increase domestic supply to correct for it.
At a campaign stop in Missouri today, Barack Obama unveiled a new energy policy that’s so brilliant it has to be heard to be believed. And to think this guy is running for President!
He actually said that!
I guess I better go check to see if my tires are properly inflated. If everybody does that, the price of a barrel of oil will drop to around 50 dollars. Why didn’t we see that all along? The man is brilliant!
Save the planet? Every Liberal thinks they’re saving the planet when they ride a bike, replace an incandescent light with a fluorescent bulb, take a three minute shower, or use only one sheet of toilet paper. Nancy Pelosi is just another liberal flake. I wonder what will happen when they find out the planet doesn’t need saving.
Forget about the planet. Save America Nancy! Drill for oil on American soil!
As Pelosi Tries to ‘Save the Planet,’ Republicans Criticize Offshore Drilling Ban
Congressional Republicans are stepping up attacks on Democrats who are blocking votes on oil drilling legislation, homing in on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was quoted saying that she wants “to save the planet.”
Pelosi, in an interview published Tuesday in Politico.com, defended her efforts to stall spending bills, saying as speaker she decides which bills will make it to the House floor.
“I’m trying to save the planet. … I will not have this debate trivialized by their excuse for their failed policy,” Pelosi said. “When you win the election, you win the majority, and what is the power of the speaker? To set the agenda, the power of recognition, and I am not giving the gavel away to anyone.”
Ahead of a Republican press conference Tuesday focusing on stalled energy priorities, House Minority Leader John Boehner responded by attacking Pelosi, who has been making talk-show rounds this week with a new book, titled “Know Your Power: A Message to America’s Daughters.”
“She’s got time to go out and promote her new book tour and her new book, but she doesn’t have time to schedule a vote on the floor of the House and let the American people have their will expressed?” Boehner told FOX News.
Boehner blamed Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama for preventing relief.
“For 25 years, Democrats have blocked more American-made oil and gas. That’s why we’re in the predicament we’re in,” said Boehner, R-Ohio. Voters want Congress “to vote on more American made oil and gas. We want to do that. She, Harry Reid, Barack Obama are standing in the way.”
House and Senate Democrats are using their control of Congress to avoid voting on opening up the Outer Continental Shelf and the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve to oil exploration, which they say is unnecessary because oil companies already have leases to millions of acres of federal land. Because of the deadlock, Democratic energy priorities have stalled, too.
Pelosi countered the criticism by issuing a statement that listed a series of editorials from newspaper boards critical of the GOP plan to allow more offshore oil drilling.
“American families and businesses are struggling with skyrocketing gas prices at the pump, but President Bush and his Republican allies in Congress continue to stand in the way of real relief,” Pelosi said in the statement. “Instead, the Bush-Cheney policy, an energy plan crafted by two oilmen in the White House, revolves around the best interests of Big Oil – from protecting tax breaks to expanding domestic oil and gas drilling.”
But with a contentious election coming up, and with most Americans now supporting drilling, Boehner and Republicans are willing to go on offense.
Boehner suggested Obama is among Democrats who he says are influenced by a “radical group of environmentalists” pushing higher gas prices.
“If you listen to Barack Obama during the primaries, you know, he didn’t think $5 gas was all that bad. He was just upset it got there so quickly. And what you’ve got, you’ve got a bunch of radical environmentalists who think that we ought to have higher gasoline prices so Americans will drive less,” Boehner said.
With four legislative weeks left before the November elections, after which Congress is likely to punt big issues until the next administration takes office, little time is left to find a means to reduce oil costs, which is blamed for driving up inflation and slowing down the economy.
“They’re trying to run out the clock,” Boehner said.
This is an interesting article, suggesting a change back to when people were proud to be American and showed their support by buying products that said “American Made” or “Made in America”. This trend is one that is good for us and America; hopefully one that continues, and becomes stronger.
It’s time for a change, the very opposite change suggested by B. Hussein Obama — Buy America, buy American made and produced, Invest in America, vote America, vote American, vote for a real and true American, vote against those who don’t like and love America – who aren’t proud of America and being an American, and who disrespect our values, our history, our flag and our troops, and all 43,000,000 who have served our country.
For me, it is a simple decision, an easy choice: America first, America first and foremost…. putting America first before “self”, politics and winning votes and an election. Simply put, American values, duty and honor — as the old commercial goes – “the old fashion way!”
Now let’s see some “Drilled in the USA” labels.
‘Made in USA’ starts to make a return
In the wake of a decades-long manufacturing exodus overseas, the climbing cost of outsourcing has some U.S. companies looking homeward.
The gap between the cost to produce goods in the United States or to produce them abroad has narrowed, thanks to a decrease in China’s competitive advantage.
The Chinese yuan has appreciated 18 percent against the dollar in the past three years, making exports more expensive and less competitive. Chinese wages have more than doubled over the past five years, and the Chinese government has lowered or eliminated tax breaks on exports.
Meanwhile, oil prices have soared from $25 a barrel in 2002 to more than $125 today, discouraging American businesses from shipping manufacturing operations overseas.
“The days are over where you just think you can go over to China to get something cheap,” said Harry Kazazian, chief executive officer of Exxel Outdoors Inc., a Haleyville, Ala., producer of outdoor recreational gear.
Exxel has been doing just that since 2005, when executives detected the beginnings of a market shift favoring homemade wares.
“It’s kind of like the light bulb goes off in your head,” Mr. Kazazian said.
“We really need to come back,” he told Exxel President Armen Kouleyan while they toured their production plants in China.
Colleagues raised their eyebrows at the plan, but Exxel soon began investing in its Haleyville, Ala., factory in preparation for a move back to the United States. The company increased the American portion of production of its best-selling family sleeping bag from 40 percent to more than 60 percent, said Mr. Kazazian. He plans to increase that to 90 percent by 2010. The company will produce 1.5 million sleeping bags this year and expects to make 2 million next year.
“We’re kind of on the front end of the trend,” Mr. Kazazian said, explaining that by maintaining its U.S. factory when other companies closed their domestic plants, Exxel avoided huge startup costs and delays when it decided to repatriate production. “We wanted to keep our options open. Whether you call it hindsight or you call it good fortune, I think that is why we’re ahead of the curve.”
No hard data are available to document the shift back to U.S. factories, said NAM Chief Economist David Huether. But a second-quarter NAM survey of 314 member companies showed that 59 percent of respondents have seen “increased costs of materials and supplies imported from abroad” and 30 percent are purchasing more supplies from domestic sources.
Mr. Kazazian said he thinks outsourcing has peaked.
Factory owners might wait and watch price trends before shifting to domestic manufacturing on a large scale, said Hank Cox, vice president of communications for the National Association of Manufacturers.
“For them to turn around and say, ‘Oops, mistake,’ that takes a lot of money to bring production back here,” he said. “It’s not just something you can do at the drop of a hat. These factors would have to continue for a while before you would see a tipping point.”
Still, economic forces make it more attractive for an increasing number of manufacturers to move toward more domestic production, Mr. Cox said. Although factories won’t gear up overnight, the sustained increases in oil prices – and shipping costs – are bringing the change closer.
Firestone Home Products, a Burnsville, Minn., maker of high-end outdoor furniture and gas grills, has decided to return 25 percent of its total manufacturing to U.S. plants from China.
China and India produce about 75 percent of Firestone’s goods today.
“There’s been steady cost increases over the last three years, and all of them have been double-digit-type increases,” said Firestone founder and President Dan Shimek, who invented Heat-N-Glo fireplaces with his brother Ron before starting Firestone in 2004. He anticipates upping American production by October.
“Our interest would be to position in the United States to begin with, so when it gets so that it’s not that much more expensive to make it here, it becomes more attractive. I would like to think that this can be done on a permanent basis,” Mr. Shimek said.
U.S. production costs are increasing along with China’s. The NAM study said 79 percent of manufacturers report increased costs for domestically produced goods. But for some businesses, reducing costs by cutting overseas shipments sweetens the incentive to manufacture in the United States.
A producer of classroom furniture for schoolchildren, Artco-Bell Corp. of Temple, Texas, has transferred production of steel and polypropylene goods from foreign to domestic sources. Although that has meant an increase in unit costs, eliminating transoceanic shipping has reduced total expenses by as much as 20 percent, said Stephen Sykes, vice president of marketing.
Over the past eight years, he said, the cost to ship a container from China increased from $2,200 to more than $7,000.
“For a while, [the Chinese] were buying steel better than we could buy steel,” Mr. Sykes said. “But as the scales began to balance as far as what they were purchasing in raw and what we were purchasing in raw, then the freight became the issue. The great equalizer is the boat ride back over.”
Increased wages in China have produced a new middle class, Mr. Sykes said. If Chinese wage gains remain high, he said, his company’s shift to domestic production could become a long-term change.
“I don’t know how it’s going to slip the other way,” he said.
U.S. labor costs are still higher than Chinese, but other factors help make U.S. production more tempting, said Mr. Kazazian.
“You’re never going to have $2-an-hour labor” in the United States, he said. “But with quality, time, efficiency, you close the gap.”
Mr. Sykes said he is happy that his company has reduced foreign outsourcing from 12 percent to less than 4 percent of total output in the past year and a half.
“Not only does it make it feasible, but it sure makes us feel a heck of a lot better to do business in the United States,” he said.
Mr. Kazazian said domestic manufacturing helps his company keep customers satisfied while encouraging patriotic pride.
“Given the opportunity, American workers are better than anyplace else,” he said. “The pride that they have when they come in and produce a product is something missing in a lot of other places. Because at the end of the day, there’s a lot of advantages to being made in the USA.”