House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi went sharply after oil speculation late yesterday, taking up a strategy to answer Republicans on rising gas prices that has not been employed much in the political sphere.

A president elected in reaction to the economic and political environment. A president hated on the left for lack of bold action and accused by the right of being a socialist. A president who appears to struggle with any sort of confrontation within his own Administration and who appears to have continuing issues with quality of staffers. A president accused of promoting class warfare and ‘uncertainty’. A president with a justice on the Supreme Court who opposes him named Roberts. A president with a wife who is, to many, as controversial as he is. A president and an Administration during a time when bold decisive action is required, but who seem to suffer from chronic timidity.

Obama or Roosevelt? Both?

Sanders went so far as to accuse Gensler of breaking the law for not implementing the Dodd-Frank regulation on position limits. He cited the now well-worn quote by Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, that the price of oil under regular market conditions should be $60-$70 a barrel (it’s currently trading at around $100). Sanders also cited the recent lawsuits from the CFTC against Parnon Energy, Arcadia Petroleum and Arcadia Energy for driving up prices during the spike of 2008, and stated that the same conditions exist today.

It took the Obama Administration years to build a case against a few financial firms for their role in the 2008 oil spike, but at least they’ve gotten around to it. The people most equipped to know the existence of the problem were screaming to the government at the time that speculation, not supply and demand, was driving prices.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission charged one trading house and two individuals for illegally manipulating oil prices during the price spike of 2008, when oil reached $147 a barrel, by creating the appearance of a shortage to drive up the benchmark for crude. While the action covers oil trading in 2008, the connection to today, where speculation is seen as a primary cause for higher gas prices, is unmistakable.

President Obama announced in his weekly address a plan to open part of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska to oil drilling. Through an executive order, the President would also extend leases in the Gulf of Mexico for oil concerns that were subject to the moratorium on deepwater drilling after the BP oil disaster, as well as speeding up evaluation of resources in the Atlantic, extending other leases in Alaska and building incentives for oil and gas companies to use land they own on existing leases on land and sea.

On a conference call, Democrats Chuck Schumer and Bob Casey today released a report with Alan Krueger of Princeton University showing that the expiration of tax subsidies for the Big 5 oil companies will have no impact on gasoline prices. This is elementary when you consider the economics of the situation. The legislation Democrats have put forward would cancel $21 billion in subsidies over 10 years. The Big 5 oil companies made $35 billion last quarter. They simply would not feel the loss of these tax subsidies whatsoever, and if they “passed them on” to consumers, the resultant price increase could only be measured in fractions of a cent. And US jobs wouldn’t be affected either, Krueger said. “Because the U.S. is such a small producer, eliminating the subsidy would have very little effect in the long run and no effect in the short run on gas prices.”

The subtext here is that this is a political play. The best use of oil company tax breaks is not deficit reduction. At a time when dwindling global oil supplies will force us to completely restructure our energy and transportation infrastructure, that money could be put to use as an investment in that direction. In fact, President Obama’s budget plan would actually do that. But deficit reduction is perceived by leading Democrats as the best political use of those funds.

The President actually did put together a task force to monitor speculation and fraud in the oil markets. And some Senate Democrats have made noise on this as well. Perhaps they spooked the speculators.

Sen. Bernie Sanders has joined the increasing call for a crackdown on speculation in the oil markets. His letter to Barack Obama calls on the President to inform the Commodity Futures Trading Commission that they must impose strict limits on oil speculation, which is required in the Dodd-Frank law. He also wants Obama to ask for the immediate resignation of any CFTC commissioner who won’t impose these position limits on oil trading.