WASHINGTON — As consumers fume over skyrocketing prices for gasoline and other commodities, congressional Democrats on Wednesday called executives from big oil companies on the carpet to explain why they appear to be making unseemly fat profits in the face of an international crisis.
The House hearing, given the title "Gouged at the Gas Station: Big Oil and America's Pain at the Pump," was in part a response to Republicans' campaign to blame Democrats for inflation, now running at a 40-year high and rising.
But in both parties, the blaming amounts to little more than political rhetoric and jawboning because neither side is prepared to push for the kind action that Washington has sometimes resorted to in wartime emergencies, experts say.
