A response to Nancy Boyda

Regarding agriculture subsidies: I can appreciate your disappointment at not being able to get a bill that you would have preferred, and I applaud your efforts to obtain a better bill. I am aware that politics is the art of compromise and our pleas to reason are not always heard. I am, however, a bit chagrined at your justification of the compromised bill as having met the approval of the associations and organizations that promote the interest of Agriculture. It remains a fact that the bill did not meet the approval of the majority of the people of the 2nd District of Kansas.
As regards the energy situation; I offered the suggestion for tariffs as a disincentive for Big Oil companies to purchase foreign oil knowing it to be an unpopular measure. I had hoped to elicit a more favorable alternative from you. You stated that tariffs would raise gas prices and lower consumption, but that it would come at “too high a price”. Your only response as to an alternative, however, was alternative fuels.
My point was that high gas prices may not necessarily be bad if they limit consumption and make the immediate development of alternative fuels economically feasible. When I drive into the gas station I see the reality of high gas prices, but what I do not see is a pump that dispenses an alternative fuel, and from what I read and hear that is not likely to be so for several years. 
Is the “too high a price” not already here? Do you really think that gas prices will come down if you cut subsidies and tax breaks to Big Oil, or if you give me a tax credit on an electric car?  Let’s get real; if subsidies and tax breaks are cut from Big Oil they will simply take that as an added cost of doing business and add it on to the price of gas. These measures serve as no disincentive for Big Oil to cease buying foreign oil or an incentive to develop alternative sources of fuel. And few of us can afford the cost of such expensive, complex cars. We might as well buy high priced gas.
If you do value the input of the people then offer us a workable energy plan. If we are destined to bear the burden of high prices, then let’s get to work on a solution. But let’s have a plan, based on reality, one that will lead to independence in energy production. Such a plan may not meet the approval of either political party, or even get to the floor of the House, but at least the voice of the people of the 2nd District of Kansas will have been heard. And isn’t that the reason ‘Mr. Smith went to Washington ’. 
Bill G.  Wilson
Pittsburg