That is, taxpayer money flowing to the oil companies. Obviously, that's not happening. Whether the oil companies are paying the fees in cash, oil, or gold coins, the direction of money flow is obvious.

I'm not sure where you're pulling the word "free" out of. Nothing going on here implies anything is "free." The oil isn't dropping out of the sky, and the government storing the wealth instead of spending it has no relevance to anything being "free."

Incidentally, 125,000 barrels a day turns out to be about 1 percent of the daily U.S. oil consumption (20.7 million barrels). I'm having a hard time believing that's going to make any major dent in the supply and price situation.

If you're really concerned about supply, we could have some fun comparing that 125,000 number to the amount of oil we could be producing if major U.S. sources hadn't been pulled away from us by our friends the Democrats. At peak, ANWAR was expected to turn out 876,000 barrels a day (the mean estimate). And that's just one such source.

Nor is the loss of the cash going to make a big difference in the Federal budget. At $113 a barrel, 125,000 barrels a day works out to about $5 billion a year, or a little less than two-tenths of a percent of the $3 trillion annual Federal budget.