McCain: Willing To Do His Job

In a fit of inspiring campaign rhetoric, John McCain today announced that he would actually be willing to fulfill his Constitutional duty as a lawmaker in service to getting oil companies more reserves for their stock portfolios.

Speaking in Montgomery County today, Republican presidential candidate John McCain called on Congress to return from its summer recess to deal with the nation's energy crisis.

And he urged his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, to join him in that call.

On Friday, the House and the Senate, both of which are controlled by the Democrats, adjourned without taking up energy legislation.

"Congress should come back in session, and I'm willing to come off the campaign trail," McCain told reporters at the Lafayette Hill headquarters of the National Label Co.

McCain hasn't been willing to come off the campaign trail since April, the last time he cast a vote in the US Senate (that's called value, Arizona constituents!). In that time he's missed dozens of energy-related votes - including one to stop tax break giveaways to oil companies where he would have been the deciding vote.

The difference here, the reason why McCain would be willing to get off his ass and go to Washington for the first time in four months, is that he wants to go get Big Oil some more assets they can use to make money, at which point he can return the favor.

Ten senior Hess Corporation executives and/or members of the Hess family each gave $28,500 to the joint RNC-McCain fundraising committee, just days after McCain reversed himself to favor offshore drilling, according to Federal Election Commission reports.

Nine of these contributions, seven from Hess executives and two from members of the Hess family, came on the same day, June 24th, the records show. The total collected in the wake of McCain's reversal for the fund, called McCain Victory 2008, from Hess execs and family is $285,000.

What's really interesting is that an office manager at Hess also delivered $28,500 to McCain's joint fund on THE SAME DAY as her bosses. I believe the word "pressure" may be involved in that transaction. (UPDATE - or substitution: it's unclear that a couple renting a house in Flushing has $57,000 to throw around)

All of this comes at a time when McCain, like Obama, is making googly eyes at a compromise proposal that would include offshore drilling. Of course, both Senators see different prizes in that legislation. And only one is bought and paid for by Big Oil. In fact, Obama struck the right tone today. Pirouetting off the McCain quote that "our dangerous dependence on foreign oil has been thirty years in the making," Obama followed with this:

What Senator McCain neglected to mention was that during those thirty years, he was in Washington for twenty-six of them. And in all that time, he did little to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. He voted against increased fuel efficiency standards and opposed legislation that included tax credits for more efficient cars. He voted against renewable sources of energy. Against clean biofuels. Against solar power. Against wind power. Against an energy bill that -- while far from perfect -- represented the largest investment in renewable sources of energy in the history of this country. So when Senator McCain talks about the failure of politicians in Washington to do anything about our energy crisis, it's important to remember that he's been a part of that failure [...]

Senator McCain would not take the steps or achieve the goals that I outlined today. His plan invests very little in renewable sources of energy and he's opposed helping the auto industry re-tool. Like George Bush and Dick Cheney before him, he sees more drilling as the answer to all of our energy problems, and like them, he's found a receptive audience in the very same oil companies that have blocked our progress for so long [...]

So make no mistake - the oil companies have placed their bet on Senator McCain, and if he wins, they will continue to cash in while our families and our economy suffer and our future is put in jeopardy.

When even the Bush Administration sees the pathetic effort to bulldog the Congress back into session as a stunt, you know it's pretty ridiculous. But of course, the goals of McCain and Bush are very much aligned here - more leases for Big Oil, more money in their executive stock holdings.

UPDATE: Obama's entire speech in Lansing is quite good, actually, and I especially like "we must end the age of oil in our time." His New Energy for America plan is here. I like that green jobs are a component. And this is pretty bold:

First, we will help states like Michigan build the fuel-efficient cars we need, and we will get one million 150 mile-per-gallon plug-in hybrids on our roads within six years [...]

The second step I'll take is to require that 10% of our energy comes from renewable sources by the end of my first term - more than double what we have now. To meet these goals, we will invest more in the clean technology research and development that's occurring in labs and research facilities all across the country and right here at MSU, where you're working with farm owners to develop this state's wind potential and developing nanotechnology that will make solar cells cheaper [...]

Finally, the third step I will take is to call on businesses, government, and the American people to meet the goal of reducing our demand for electricity 15% by the end of the next decade. This is by far the fastest, easiest, and cheapest way to reduce our energy consumption - and it will save us $130 billion on our energy bills [...]

In just ten years, these steps will produce enough renewable energy to replace all the oil we import from the Middle East. Along with the cap-and-trade program I've proposed, we will reduce our dangerous carbon emissions 80% by 2050 and slow the warming of our planet. And we will create five million new jobs in the process.

Not quite what's needed to meet the problem, but certainly a start, especially on plug-in hybrids. Joseph Romm from Climate Progress likes it. I don't like the idea of nuclear and clean coal's presence, and think they need a lot more lab study before they get rolled out. I would rather Obama checks in with the folks at MIT:

In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn't shine.

Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With today's announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.

Requiring nothing but abundant, non-toxic natural materials, this discovery could unlock the most potent, carbon-free energy source of all: the sun. "This is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years," said MIT's Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of a paper describing the work in the July 31 issue of Science. "Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon."

I do believe that the revolution on this will be technological in nature.