Congratulations

to the Senate Democrats, along with Republicans Mike DeWine of Ohio and Lincoln Chaffee of Rhode Island, for refusing to lessen our dependence on foreign oil. They successfully filibustered the budget bill today because of the provision to drill for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.

Oh, not all Democrats: voting against the filibuster were both Hawaiian senators, Daniel Akaka and Daniel Inouye, along with Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Ben Nelson of Nebraska. Please note that those in favor of drilling in ANWR included both Alaska senators, Ted Stevens and Lisa Murkowski. The final vote fell three votes shy of ending the filibuster.

Like it or not, our reliance on countries like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela for our oil supplies is a matter of security as well as economics. As long as we buy 43 percent of our oil from OPEC (including 12 percent each from the Saudi Royal Family and loose cannon Hugo Chávez), we lose some leverage against those countries to cooperate in the war on terror.

Would ANWR erase our energy dependence? Of course not. But it would reduce the need, and would buy us more time to explore alternative energy sources so that we could be independent. We import about 4.8 billion barrels of oil annually, so we could completely eliminate oil imports for 1-3 years (depending on the ANWR supply), or we could reduce our imports by, say, 1 billion barrels a year for 5-10 years and spend that time investing in alternative sources.

The Democratic Party — with help from DeWine and Chaffee — once again has proven it is not credible about our nation's security. All because the Democrats will take any opportunity to oppose the president regardless of the issue.