WASHINGTON, May 16 (UPI) -- Global oil prices spiked at nearly $127 a barrel this week, and Republicans and Democrats alike in Congress don't have the faintest idea what to do about it.

The Bush administration and congressional Republicans are quite understandably being hung out to dry by an irate American public. They controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress for most of the time from January 2001 to January 2007, and all their main energy and Middle East policies have collapsed disastrously.

Bush policymakers, especially the team of Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith that drove the 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein and subsequent U.S. occupation of Iraq, were certain that "freeing" Iraq's oil reserves would rapidly bring global oil prices down to $10 a barrel. Instead, today they are more than 12 times as high.

But there is no indication that the Democrats now controlling both houses of Congress and poised to win the White House with Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., in November would do any better, and they could even be far worse.

For on Tuesday, the Democrat-controlled Senate threw out a GOP proposal to increase offshore oil and gas drilling to let cash-strapped individual U.S. states with offshore reserves make more money.