Remember the good old days, when Republicans railed at Al Gore because gas passed a dollar and a half per gallon at the pump, and oil was at $25 a barrel? Remember how they screamed and yelled about the 4.3-cents-per-gallon tax that was bankrupting the American driver? Remember how Bush skewered Gore for not handling OPEC to get them to lower prices? Remember how refineries were a major issue, especially later in California, where oil and gas companies had shut down refineries there in an effort to gouge Californians, and how Bush completely ignored the crisis and let the companies gouge without restraint because it was Blue?

Ah, the good old days. But now oil prices have tripled and gas prices are on their way to doubling. Life under Bush/Cheney is now far worse.

Under the eight years of the Clinton administration, gas prices at the pump rose just 20%, adjusted for inflation. Under the Bush administration, prices have increased about twice as fast, and that’s even before Katrina. Bush has not “handled” OPEC, and not a single new refinery has been built. Bush backers will argue that $20 billion between 2000 and 2010 is being spent on refineries, but don’t believe the misdirection: almost all of that money, a tiny fraction of the industry’s profits, is being spent of bringing the refineries up to code–it is not being used to increase capacity, nor is it being used to build new refineries. Only one new refinery is scheduled to go online in the future, and won’t be operational before 2010. When was the last time you saw Bush get on the backs of big oil to build more refineries?

In 2000, Cheney blasted Clinton/Gore for not doing exactly that:

We don’t have refinery capacity. We haven’t built a new refinery in this country for over 10 years. And the refineries are now operating at 96 or 97% percent of capacity, which means even with more crude available, they’re probably not going to be able to do very much by way of producing additional home heating Oil for this winter.

Well, guess what? Bush and Cheney have not gotten a single new refinery built in the past five years, despite their being best buds with the oil industry. Despite? Because, more like it. Refineries were operating at 99% capacity even before Katrina, not just the 96 or 97 that Cheney wailed about. Oil company and refinery profits have exploded, and Bush just got through giving the industry a $14.5 billion handout–and now they’re gouging prices on top of all that, taking advantage of Katrina, and like always, Bush refuses to reign them in.

All this proves is that former oilmen Bush and Cheney haven’t done squat to increase capacity, haven’t lifted a finger to fix the problems they harshly accused Clinton and Gore of letting slide. And now that Katrina has hit, that failure is going to cost all Americans painfully at the gas pump. The hit to refineries in the south will be blamed on Katrina, but the blame for the country’s unpreparedness lies sharply on Bush, Cheney, and the oil industry. An industry whose profits will now soar from the merely usurious to the astronomically obscene. Prices will not go up because it is costing the oil industry more; prices will go up because supply will fall. This is about soaring profits, not rising prices.

And don’t believe for a moment that not drilling in ANWR is to blame–oil supply is not what’s causing this, it’s refining capacity and the national energy policy and planning.

On a side issue, the Iraq War has meant that rescue efforts in the South have been badly weakened–much of the manpower and machinery that should have been available to help victims of the hurricane is now in Iraq. Additionally, Bush’s dismantling of FEMA over the past few years has made disaster handling and recovery efforts far more strained and difficult than they should be. On the bright side, Bush is “getting on with his life,” playing golf and biking, while the storm victims live through hell.

Next: Why we need an energy Manhattan Project, and why Bush and Cheney will fail miserably at that, too.