By Douglas Holtz-Eakin
The young drop coverage to avoid higher premiums
Americans spent nearly 4 percent of their household budgets on gasoline in 2012, the highest percentage in three decades as persistently high pump prices cut into their checkbooks, the government acknowledged Monday.
Unsurprisingly, an oil-and-gas company consultant who works for an oil-funded institute vehemently opposes my efforts to prevent one-fifth of America's natural gas from being exported to China, Latin America and Europe ("Democrats' dumbest new energy idea," Commentary, Tuesday).
President Obama on Friday signed off on tough new sanctions aimed at hitting Iran's oil exports, after determining there is enough crude supplies in the world market that taking the step won't harm U.S. allies or drive gas prices even higher.
In January 2009, when President Obama was sworn in, a gallon of regular gasoline cost $1.68. Today, it's more than double that, reaching $5 in parts of California and $6 just outside Disney World in Florida.
America has an energy addiction - and it's not an addiction to oil, as many politicians would have you think. It's an addiction to government subsidies. The addicts, you see, are energy producers, not the consumers.
