Your senators don’t give a darn about you.

OK, that’s not a newsflash. But I’m talking about your senators — Maryland Sens. Barbara Mikulski and Benjamin Cardin.

Both have long records of community support. Mikulski built that reputation admirably defending Fells Point against highway demolition. Cardin has an equally strong rep defending his constituents during a lengthy career.

But that all went out the window when the Democratic duo voted against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) recently. Drilling in Alaska doesn’t sound local, but it is.

This story continues below
Advertisement

It’s a local issue every time you pull up to the gas pump and pay close to $4 a gallon. The vote showed when faced with an essential issue affecting Marylanders, they simply pulled the lever to the left. Mikulski and Cardin are as reflexively liberal as Pavlov’s dogs were hungry.

Ring a bell and the senators take a bite out of your wallet.

You probably haven’t heard a ton about the ANWR vote. It’s one of those liberal/conservative divides that almost never gets crossed in Washington. So the votes usually get ignored by the media.

But this one needs to be different because the prices of oil and gasoline are so high.

ANWR is a vast wasteland of 19 million acres, or three times the size of Maryland. Picture hell — only colder and less stylish. If you’ve seen lush pictures of wilderness called ANWR, they weren’t in ANWR. CBS showed some nice Siberia-esque footage in 2001 if you have any doubts.

It’s not what ANWR looks like above ground that matters. It’s what lies beneath. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, ANWR could have up to 16 billion barrels of oil. If Jed Clampett had owned ANWR, they would have had to change the TV theme song to “trillionaire,” twice over.

Only Jed wouldn’t have been able to drill thanks to the enviro-wackos and the politicians they own on the Democratic side of the aisle. In 1995, the GOP-led Senate had the votes to get it to President Bill Clinton. But Clinton vetoed it, saying it would take 10 years to produce that oil.

Send Bill a calendar. We’re 13 years out and oil has shot to the moon — affecting almost every item we buy. But Mikulski and Cardin couldn’t care less.

What’s particularly appalling is that they pretend otherwise. They lie. Mikulski’s Web site touts her taking the “1st Step Toward Gas Price Relief” by nixing the daily 70,000 barrels of oil we set aside for emergencies. A year of that equals a day’s worth of what we use in the U.S. If that’s the “1st step,” Mikulski better be starting a marathon.

Cardin scores points for hypocrisy. During a May 21 congressional pandering session about energy prices, he made my point, not his. “We have a problem: We are dependent on foreign oil, and that has caused problems for our national security, environment and now our economy.” Eight days before, he had voted against drilling in ANWR.

Your senators just love you.

 Dan Gainor can be seen each week on Friday afternoons on the new Fox

Business Network. He is T. Boone Pickens Fellow at the Media Research Center’s Business & Media Institute, a career journalist and media commentator. He can be reached at gainorcolumn@gmail.com.