McConnell blames Obama for high gas, oil prices

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Sunday that the President Obama is at least partially to blame for rising gas and energy prices.

“He certainly has participated,” McConnell said on Fox News Sunday. “This administration has been shutting down wells.”

Reacting to a quote from the president in which he noted that domestic production levels have actually gone up, McConnell said the Bush administration should get the credit for that.

“There’s been a conscious effort to make it difficult to drill in this country, both onshore and offshore, by the bureaucrats who’ve been appointed by this administration,” McConnell said. “And the president noting that there’s been a slight uptick in production doesn’t get to the heart of the problem.”

Republicans have been pressing the energy issue this week as the cost of gasoline has risen. 

On another energy issue – nuclear power – the Kentucky Republican said that the current crisis in Japan shouldn’t deter Americans from developing more nuclear reactors.

“I don’t think that right after a major environmental catastrophe is a very good time to be making American domestic policy,” he said. “We ought not to make American domestic policy based on an event that happened in Japan.”