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Culpable Congress

Prices: The big jump in the consumer price index on Friday scared a lot of people. But the sad fact is, much of inflation's recent rise is due to the upward spiral of energy prices. And guess whose fault that is?

Answer: Congress, of course. By refusing to drill for more oil — that is, more and cheaper energy to run our economy — the Democrat-led Congress has put us in an inflationary box.

In May, the consumer price index rose 0.6% — higher than expected, and a gain of 4.2% from a year ago. When you exclude food and energy, inflation was just 0.2% for the month and 2.3% from last year.

Since the end of 2002, overall inflation has risen about 18.3%. But energy is up 92%. With energy accounting for 10% of the CPI, it's not hard to see why inflation's rising.

In short, our current inflation problem turns out to be an energy problem. And the problem can be described thusly: When demand for something grows, you must also grow supply — or prices rise.

Take food. Recent rises in food prices, most economists agree, are a function of fast-growing prices for energy. Key input costs for food — fertilizer, fuel for tractors and other farm equipment, transporting food to market — are keenly sensitive to energy prices. Food and energy rise in lock step.

Yes, inflation has heated up. But it's largely because Congress has refused to drill for the plentiful oil that lies within our nation's boundaries and has chosen to subsidize the use of food to make very expensive energy. This is economically silly.

Going after the billions of barrels of oil in Alaska, under our Rocky Mountains and beneath our coastal seas would break the back of energy prices (see accompanying editorial, right).

By the way, some have tried to argue that the Federal Reserve now needs to hike interest rates to rein in inflation. But this, too, is wrong. The rises in energy and food prices have common causes — food supply disruptions, in large part to supply farm goods once used as food for the ethanol industry, and strong economic growth in India and China, which together contain one-third of the world's 6 billion or so people.

Both Indians and Chinese have built market economies in recent years and are creating thriving middle-classes. India's middle class now includes more people than in all of France, while China is taking about 20 million people a year off the farm and turning them into urban dwellers.

These people, with their rising incomes, are demanding bigger houses, more cars, TVs, better food — more of everything that makes modern life good. This is a challenge for America and its allies — not something to shrink from.

The Fed isn't to blame for this. Yet, all these people getting richer have strained our supply system for food and energy, and now we must make more.

We have as many as 139 billion barrels of oil on our territory that is economically viable for us to get right now — all we have to do is go get it. That's Congress' job. Why won't it do it?

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