You can tell it's an election year by recent congressional responses to high gas prices: Senate Republicans want to provide a $100 rebate to offset rising prices to taxpayers and a Senate Democrat is seeking to rescind the federal gas tax for 60 days.

Neither solution is notable except for the extent to which it panders to motorists who are paying high gas prices at the pump, and who also may vote. Since the federal gas tax supports mass transit and road building projects, a moratorium on the 18-cent per gallon tax would only have a negative effect on those federally assisted programs.

And a $100 rebate presumably would add billions to the ever-rising national deficit, while addressing nothing more substantive than the consumers' temporary pain at the pump. Long-term solutions are required.

The Republican bill also includes a provision to open up Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil exploration, a highly controversial proposal that could doom the rebate plan, which should fail on its own lack of merits.

The rising price of fuel also has renewed interest in exploratory drilling off the Atlantic coast, banned under a federal moratorium since 1981. A bill backed by most of the state's congressional delegation would allow states to decide whether to permit exploratory drilling. The state should view such a proposal with extreme wariness.

Gov. Mark Sanford takes the correct position that South Carolina should be reluctant to endorse an activity offshore that could damage tourism, the state's most important industry. Gov. Sanford's call for more attention to alternative energy is shared by Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C.

Giving states authority over offshore drilling ignores the fact that any environmental problems that result won't be confined to the shoreline of a single state or to the marine resources that are generally shared.

As columnist Deborah Saunders wrote on our Commentary page, there appears to be sentiment for removing tax breaks to the oil industry (which the industry acknowledged it no longer needed in recent congressional testimony) and for price-gouging inquiries. The intense flurry of populist, politically fueled solutions demonstrates the absence of a coherent, comprehensive energy policy.