Politics & Power Quote by Jim Costa

“Addiction” is doing the heavy lifting here: it turns an economic pattern into a moral failing, something shameful, compulsive, and hard to quit. Costa isn’t just arguing for an energy policy tweak; he’s framing oil dependence as a national bad habit that has outlasted multiple “efforts of Congresses.” That phrase is a quiet indictment of Washington’s own cycle of talk, bills, commissions, and half-measures. The subtext is blunt: we’ve tried the respectable, incremental routes, and they’ve been politically convenient failures.

By invoking “as the President stated,” Costa borrows executive authority while also spreading responsibility. If the problem is “greater today than ever before,” no single party can claim a clean record, and no single solution can be dismissed as partisan grandstanding. It’s an inside move in Congress: align with the White House’s diagnosis, then position yourself as the adult insisting on follow-through.

The national security framing is the real pivot. Rather than debating gas prices or environmentalism (both politically volatile), Costa relocates the argument to a safer, post-9/11 register where dependence equals vulnerability: supply shocks, geopolitical leverage from petrostates, military entanglements, economic instability. Calling it a “threat” compresses a sprawling set of choices into a single imperative: action is not optional, because in security politics, delay looks like negligence.

What makes the rhetoric work is its escalation ladder: failure of past governance, worsened present condition, then the security ultimatum. It’s less a policy proposal than a permission slip to do something big.