“This leadership team will create the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history.”

-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Nov. 16, 2006

These kinds of promises are easy to make when the wind is at your back. That was then, in the wake of midterm elections, before $4-plus gasoline. It was before high energy costs helped drive our consumer-based economy into a tailspin. But most importantly, before the American people lifted their voices in outrage over the recklessness of an ironclad Democrat policy that willingly outsources our energy needs to the whims of foreign oil producers.

Right now middle-class Americans are suffering from expensive-energy induced inflation. We all know the adverse consequences pain at the pumps has wrought. So what does “the most open” House majority of all time do when a fair and honest debate over drilling doesn’t exactly help them?

They dodge the debate for weeks. They disingenuously lead the American people to believe that oil and gas won’t necessarily be a part of our energy needs in the future. They schedule votes on feckless energy legislation – see “use it or lose it” and oil speculation - to make it look like they are doing something. They justify their stonewalling as an effort to “save the planet,” impervious to the fact that other countries with far worse environmental track records will only intensify their drilling efforts.

But worst of all, they skip out of town for five-weeks without allowing a single vote or amendment that would meaningfully alter the imbalance of supply and demand that has triggered the spike in oil prices. This is a dereliction of duty of the gravest magnitude.

As Congressional Democrats sprint out of town for the August recess, most American families, mindful of the steep cost of traveling, will stay home. Instead of vacationing, Americans will go back to work. With the economy reeling from high energy prices, shouldn’t they expect lawmakers to make an effort to lower gas prices?

We are calling on the Democrat majority to promptly return to work and engage us in the drilling debate the country so desperately wants and needs to hear.

Sign the Petition: www.CallCongressBack.com and demand House Democrats to act to lower gas prices.