Every parent of a son or daughter in the Persian Gulf ought to ask his Congressman, What's your plan to reduce our dependency on foreign oil?" Richard Bryan, a Nevada Democrat, made that challenge last week after the Senate voted to block his bill, which would have imposed tough new fuel- economy laws on the auto industry. Unfortunately, most members of Congress would have to answer, "We don't have one."
In the two decades since the Arab oil embargo demonstrated America's vulnerability to the whims of foreign producers, the U.S. still has nothing resembling an energy policy. As oil prices reached...