John Block Reports from Washington

Hello everybody out there in farm country. This radio commentary is brought to you by the Renewable Fuels Association, Wal-Mart Stores, Monsanto, and John Deere. They are all friends, supporters, and allies of a healthy farm economy and prosperous rural America. Thank you.

And now for today's commentary.

Complaints persist about $4.00 gasoline. The debate rages on. Congressional Committees drag in oil executives, question and blame them for the high prices. We bemoan the fact that we are sending billions of dollars to Middle Eastern countries, Russian, and Venezuela to buy their oil.

O.K. If we want to fix the problem, the simple answer is we need more energy. Thcre are many options. We should not eliminate any of them. At least not at this time. The market will pick the winners. Don't give up on biofuels because of an increase in food prices. That's a phony argument anyway. Let's start building some nuclear plants. When I was in the French countryside last summer, nuclear plants were everywhere. Maybe wind power is part of the answer. I don't care if a stupid bird Dies into the windmill. We have a lot of birds. The sun shines a lot in Arizona. Maybe that state could be self-sufficient with solar. We haven't built a refinery in 30 years. Push that "not in my back yard" crowd out of the way and build it. We need oil and will keep using it for the foreseeable future. Then let's drill on our own lands. Why should the Cubans and the Chinese be drilling off our Florida coast while we sit on our hands. If there is oil in Alaska, we should go for it.

Finally, don't disregard coal. We have a lot of it. Most of our electricity comes from coal. Clean coal technology works.

The biggest problem now is that different members of Congress and different interest groups are fighting against everyone of these ideas.

Let's face it -there is no perfect solution!

We need to do everything. Keep our money and jobs here at home and move toward energy independence.

Until next week, I am John Block from Washington.