Cheney: Let us rid ourselves of the fiction that low oil prices are somehow good for the United States

The Bush campaign has attacked Senator Kerry as favoring higher gas prices. "Some people have wacky ideas like taxing gasoline more so people drive less. That's John Kerry," a recent Bush campaign commercial said. The commercial singled out Mr. Kerry's support a decade ago for a 50-cent gas tax increase, part of a deficit-reduction package that Mr. Kerry never even voted for.

By contrast, when vice-president Dick Cheney was in Congress, he introduced legislation to create a new import tax that would have caused the price of oil, and ultimately the price of gasoline paid by American drivers, to soar by billions of dollars per year.

"Let us rid ourselves of the fiction that low oil prices are somehow good for the United States," Mr. Cheney said shortly after introducing the legislation.

If his plan had been enacted when Mr. Cheney introduced it, in the years that followed it would have cost U.S. consumers $1.2 trillion.

Sen. Durbin said, "It is hard to explain how they could attack John Kerry for even considering a 50-cent gas tax, which he didn't introduce or vote for, and ignore Cheney's own legislation in 1986 which would have dramatically raised the cost of gasoline."

But it's not hard to explain. It's just another example of Bush administration hypocrisy.