Having yet another vote on refinery legislation that uses high oil prices as an excuse to weaken environmental protections and to give more legislative gifts to the oil industry is misguided in the extreme.

The way things are going, we are not too far from the day when it will take an hour's labor just to pay for the gasoline to get to the job.

So we in Congress have a very clear choice. We can take largely symbolic action and sit back and fiddle while Americans burn more gasoline. Or we can pass concrete, effective legislation that will save consumers money while significantly reducing U.S. oil consumption.

First, we should not be opening our coasts, all of our coasts, to oil drilling when we have not taken the first step, not the first step, to conserve oil.

About 60 percent of the oil consumed daily by Americans is used for transportation, and about 45 percent is used for passenger cars and light trucks.

Well, for starters, we have to do more to create demand for new technologies that can reduce our dependence on foreign oil and environmental degradation.

Our oil problems are only going to get worse. Our trade balance is only going to get worse. So we have to slow the growth of U.S. oil consumption, particularly imported oil consumption.