Wednesday's Views on the News

Cheney casts tie-breaking vote in Senate to pass budget.  The Republican-controlled Senate passed legislation to cut federal deficits by $39.7 billion on Wednesday by the narrowest of margins, 51-50, with Vice President Dick Cheney casting the deciding vote.

==> This is one of those smoke and mirror deals where "budget cuts" really mean slowing the rate of growth, not actual spending cuts.   Maybe we should try this approach at home.  Try this with your spouse next month "Honey, instead of spending $900 for that new set of golf clubs, I'm going to spend $700.  I figure that would cut our monthly budget by $200."

Drilling in ANWR fails.  A quarter-century long fight over the nation's most divisive environmental issue rages on after the Senate on Wednesday rejected opening an Alaska wildlife refuge to oil drilling.

==> This is the kind of news that is somewhat troubling.  The US burns over 20,000,000 barrels of oil a day.  12,000,000 of that is imported.  ANWR would bring upwards of 1,000,000 barrels of oil a day to market within 5 years.  Either we burn it, or sell it to Japan.   If we sell 1,000,000 barrels of oil a day from ANWR to Japan for $55 a barrel, that gives us $55,000,000 a day to buy oil from Canada/Mexico/wherever that we don't currently have today.  It would represent 5% of our total oil consumption needs on a daily basis.  In 5 years, we're going to need that oil from somewhere.  There isn't any widescale use of alternative energies to replace oil at this point. Everything talked about so far has minimal impact.