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Highlands Today

Bipartisan Solution Needed

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Dan Jarvis

Published: June 23, 2008

Dean Johnson wrote a letter blaming liberal Democrats for the rising price of gasoline.

This is an example of the blind partisanship that is partly responsible for the trouble we're in.

At least since the '70s, we've known that foreign oil would be a problem for us. But as Fox News pointed out, the first offshore oil ban was passed during the Reagan Administration. Then the senior President Bush, followed by Clinton and the current President Bush, all issued executive orders banning offshore drilling. Jeb Bush, meanwhile, prevailed on his brother to re-purchase existing offshore oil leases in 2002, shutting down any chance that there would be offshore drilling in Florida.

Are Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Jeb Bush all liberal Democrats?
In addition, we've had Republican presidents for 20 out of the last 28 years, and Republicans have controlled Congress for most of the last 14 years.

The fact is that a lack of vision and leadership by politicians from both sides of the aisle got us into this mess.

Rather than inaccurately blaming one side or the other, wouldn't it be more productive to join forces and find solutions together that will make the U.S. independent of foreign oil?

Dan Jarvis
Lake Placid

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