I guess GOP Chairman Mel Martinez (R)-FL missed the memo about the US becoming less dependent upon foreign oil.

Florida’s U.S. senators are finding themselves in an all-too-familiar situation: protesting yet another bid to explore for energy off the Florida coast.

Republican Sen. Mel Martinez and Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson are teaming up to fight a proposal that calls for spending $10 million to conduct a seismic inventory of the “oil and natural gas resources of the Eastern Gulf of Mexico.”

“I’m committed to defeating this provision,” Martinez said in a statement. “It might have made it out of committee, but it won’t survive on the floor. Florida’s waters are protected; a survey would be pointless and a waste of taxpayer resources.”

Hey, I’m all for using foreign oil and saving our own resources until we have a monopoly on them but Mr. Martinez’s position doesn’t match up with the general party position or good common sense. This isn’t even the dreaded drilling, which seems to frighten everyone, even though we’ve been doing it for years successfully in the Gulf. It is a survey for crying out loud.

A spokesman for Craig said the two senators are “clearly on the record that we ought to produce more oil and gas domestically, rather than buying it from third-world dictators.”

”In order to make responsible decisions about our future oil development we should know what we have,” said spokesman Dan Whiting.

It would be nice to know if we have a couple of Saudi Arabia’s off our coastline, wouldn’t it? Is it any wonder that the GOP is in trouble on a national level?