DID YOU hear the one about the liberal Pennsylvania congressman who voted to spend $5 million to ban the interstate transport of monkeys while hardworking Americans were struggling to pay for gasoline at more than $4 a gas? 

Sadly, it’s no joke. Congressman Chris Carney, D-Dimock Township, recently voted to spend our money on monkey regulations, while voting against even allowing debate on a bill that would lower the cost of gas by increasing U.S. refining capacity.

Beyond his opposition to additional refineries, Carney is an obstacle to lower gas prices for several other reasons.

Regrettably, my opponent in the November election has marched in lockstep with the liberal Democratic leadership in Congress, opposing increased access to domestic energy supplies. And Carney opposes any reduction in gas taxes.

So Carney’s position is roughly this: We have to keep gas taxes high; we cannot produce more oil from American sources in Alaska or off our coasts; and we cannot build more refineries to bring our oil reserves to market faster.

Carney has a perfect record from the viewpoint of the liberal special interest groups that bankroll him. But it’s a lousy record for Pennsylvanians who are suffering at the gas pump.

The good news is it doesn’t have to stay that way, if we have the courage to first change our politicians and then change our policies.

With conservative estimates of 10.4 billion barrels of oil in Alaska, 86 billion barrels of offshore oil, and over 1 trillion barrels in domestic oil shale, we could go a long way toward lower gas prices and energy independence simply by allowing access to domestic supplies.

This expansion of domestic oil supplies can and should be done in ways that do not harm the environment. The extreme liberal environmental special interests that now have a stranglehold on Congress engage in very unhelpful and inaccurate scare tactics.

The truth is that the portion of Alaska in which there are huge amounts of oil reserves is a tiny and remote fraction of the area. And when hurricanes destroyed more than 100 oil platforms off our shores in the Gulf of Mexico a couple of years ago, no oil was spilled.

We mustn’t damage our environment. But we also must not allow extreme and false environmental scare tactics to prevent us from adopting commonsense approaches to ease the massive burden that gas prices are placing on our people and our economy.

Beyond additional domestic oil production, we also must encourage alternatives such as clean coal, nuclear, wind and solar energy. And we must encourage the use of energy-efficient cars.

Congressman Carney will tell you that it’s all the fault of the oil companies. That’s a smokescreen designed to distract attention from his record.

I oppose the tax breaks given to the oil industry by President Bush’s energy bill. Interestingly, John McCain also opposed those tax breaks for Big Oil, while Barack Obama supported them.

Carney will say I should sell stock in oil companies, all the while he hypocritically keeps his own investments in them. This is all very much beside the point. We should not give special tax deals to oil companies, but neither should we scapegoat them. Oil companies make money, as do their hundreds of thousands of employees and millions of shareholders. We will not solve our energy problems by killing the American oil industry, and we will not help our economy by killing the jobs it creates.

The solutions to $4-per-gallon gas are within our reach. They include more refineries, more domestic oil production, more use of alternative sources, lower gas taxes, and more conservation and fuel efficiency. The solutions are simple, but implementing them is not easy. Why?

Because the Washington politicians care more about appeasing the special interests and pointing the finger of blame at the other party than they do about getting results. When we change that Washington mentality, we’ll start making progress on gas prices and in a whole lot of other areas.

Chris Hackett, a resident of Kingston Township, is a Republican running for U.S. Congress in the 10th District, which encompasses all or parts of 14 counties in Northeastern Pennsylvania.