From The Seattle Times
By Maria Cantwell

Almost eight years ago, President Bush and I were sworn into our respective offices after exceedingly close elections. I became the 50th senator in an evenly divided Senate, and he became president of an evenly divided country.

I held out hope that a split Congress and the new president would be forced to work together to craft bipartisan solutions to America’s long-term problems. Unfortunately, within a few months it became clear that the two former oil men now in charge at the White House had no intention of leading America into the new millennium.

Shortly after taking office, Vice President Dick Cheney held secret meetings with oil companies to map out their shared “drill here, drill everywhere” vision for America’s energy future. While families and businesses dealt with the West Coast energy crisis that caused blackouts in California and huge electricity price spikes in the Pacific Northwest, our president claimed it was just a supply-and-demand problem, not blatant market manipulation by Enron and others.

For the past eight years, it has been more of the same. This administration has constantly fed and reinforced our nation’s fossil-fuel addiction. For the past eight years, Big Oil’s agenda trumped America’s. For the past eight years, the White House and Republicans in Congress talked up clean energy but refused to support or fund it

The policies of old need to change. It matters who is president.

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