Thirty-two long years have passed since the U.S. had a new oil refinery. But a small South Dakota community wants to change that. Finally, some rational thinking.

Union County, home to 12,584 in South Dakota's southeastern corner, voted 58% to 42% Tuesday to approve a request by Hyperion Energy to build a refinery north of Elk Point, the county seat of 1,855.

The facility, expected to turn out 400,000 barrels of ultralow-sulfur gasoline and diesel fuel a day, just might be the biggest thing to happen to the area.

As far as energy is concerned, it could be the biggest thing to happen to this nation since 1976, widely known as America's bicentennial year but less so as the date the last new oil refinery was built in the U.S. Since that refinery was built in Garyville, La., more than three decades ago, environmental groups have successfully bullied policymakers into blocking any new ones.

Meanwhile, America has gone from 301 refineries in 1982 to less than half that (149). The refining process is far more efficient today, yet output hasn't kept pace with demand. As domestic oil consumption has increased from 17 million barrels a day in 1982 to nearly 21 million a day in 2007, the country now has to import 10% of the gasoline we burn. We just don't make enough.

Wonder no more why we've become so reliant on foreign crude to fuel our economy and have little choice but to do more business with unsavory characters than we should.

Though Union County supporters celebrated their win at the polls, the festivities might be a bit premature. Opponents say they won't give up. Having lost the both the legislative and public opinion wars, their attempts to tangle up the project are now limited to the courts and the bureaucratic permitting process. They have a long history of success to draw on that will not be easily countered.

The 3,932 Union County residents who voted in favor of the refinery probably weren't thinking about boosting domestic oil output as much as they were the economic benefits of having a refinery in town. Dallas-based Hyperion expects the project to bring a $10 billion investment to the area and provide as many as 4,500 construction jobs over four years after ground is broken in 2010.

Once fully operational, the refinery will need 1,826 full-time workers manning jobs whose wages will range from $20 to $30 an hour. Hyperion estimates the direct and indirect economic impact of the facility will total $13.7 billion a year.

But unlike foes who can't see beyond their contempt for what they derogatorily call Big Oil and their blind devotion to anti-capitalist environmentalism, the supporters are looking ahead. They saw clearly where their choices would lead.

Energy: In their ongoing war against U.S. oil producers, Senate Democrats say they'll slap Big Oil with a windfall profits tax and take away $17 billion in tax breaks, among other punishments. This is an energy plan?

The planned 25% tax on windfall profits would be imposed on oil company earnings above what the Senate's wise members decided was "reasonable." Never mind that what's "reasonable" to one person might be punitive to another.

Senators also want to impose steep penalties on "price gouging" — despite the fact that some 17 separate studies have found it doesn't exist. The plan amounts to little more than an attempt to impose price controls — a socialist tool dressed up in populist garb.

Democrats hailed their new measure as an attack on "the root causes of high gas prices." That's one of the more laughable comments to emerge from the Senate in some time.

As any student who's taken Econ 101 at the local junior college can tell you, higher taxes don't encourage production; they discourage it. But Senate Democrats apparently played hooky the day taxes were discussed. They should at least have read the report from their own nonpartisan Congressional Research Service in 2006.

It shows that from 1980 to 1986, the last time the U.S. had a windfall profits tax on oil companies, the results were disappointing. As the chart shows, oil companies were hit hard by the tax. And in line with basic economic theory, they produced less oil, not more.

"Over the entire 1980-1986 period," the study said, "the (windfall profits tax) reduced domestic oil production from between 320 million barrels . . . and 1,268 million barrels."

The study also concluded: "The effect of reducing domestic oil production was to increase the level of imported oil."

At the time, the U.S. imported about 30% of its oil; today, we import about 60%. In part, that jump in oil dependency was due to the huge tax advantage we gave foreign oil companies in the 1980s — and to the continuing advantage we give them today by refusing to let our oil companies produce more crude from our own reserves.

The Democratic Party's bad energy policies in the 1970s hit poor Americans hardest, while delivering our energy future into the hands of OPEC's unelected poobahs. Now they want to do it again.

By the way, if they try to sell you on the idea that this will be a deficit-cutting move, don't believe it. Revenues from the windfall tax were far less than expected, because producers pumped less and nontaxed imports flooded our market. Compared with a forecast of $393 billion in windfall tax revenues from 1980 to 1988, Congress got a mere $80 billion.

In short, the windfall profits tax is a loser — on every level.

Likewise, the Senate's proposals for new penalties on "price gouging" are also fated to fail. This we know because when Jimmy Carter tried price controls, they resulted in massive shortages, blocklong lines at gas stations and, ultimately, gasoline rationing.

Perhaps the worst lie uttered in defense of price controls and higher taxes is that the less well-off will benefit. Don't believe it.

Even as Democrats mouth pieties about "bringing down the price of gasoline" for the poor, they will in fact be hitting working Americans with a big tax hike. "A windfall profits tax on big oil companies may sound good in theory," the nonpartisan Tax Foundation said last week, "but it will be paid by individuals." Big Oil doesn't pay the tax; you do.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi criticized President Bush for offering "two ways of dealing with the energy crisis — drill and veto." But that's a far better plan than anything the Democrats have offered.

Tapping the hundreds of billions of barrels of oil that we have on land and offshore makes sense. It would add supply and lower the price. Every Democratic plan now on the board — every one — would do the opposite.

Energy Policy: When America's biggest oil refiner contemplates putting almost a third of its refineries on the market, Congress should sit up and take notice. The business climate it has created is hurting our economy.

Valero Energy Corp. is an industry leader that refines more oil than any other in the U.S. The San Antonio, Texas, company had a good run in the stock market this decade, rising 1,400% before earnings topped last year. But it's no longer so easy for the company or any refiner.

Valero will probably sell three of its 17 refineries this year and maybe two more later to focus on its core operations amid what CEO Bill Klesse acknowledged on Tuesday is a weak economy.

But maybe that's because the environment for the energy business in the U.S. has turned downright hostile.

Upstream, oil drilling is off-limits, crimping supply and driving prices ever higher. Downstream, refiners are hit by not only high energy prices, but also bureaucratic regulations, environmental lobbies and special interests that make moving to Asia, where economic growth is still valued, more attractive.

The sorry fact that no new refinery has been built in America since 1983 has been cited so many times that we would have thought someone in Washington would have done something about it by now. But no — it just keeps getting worse.

In 1982, the U.S. economy was served by 301 refineries. By 2007, the number had dwindled to 149. Productivity has kept output steady over the years at 17 million barrels a day. But the U.S. economy has grown by 125%.

"Valero believes there will never be another refinery built in the U.S.," spokesman Bill Day told IBD. He cited costs, environmental regulations, neighborhood activism and lawsuits.

"For a new refinery, it would take five years for a permit and five years for construction, and it's very expensive. A company would have to know it would pay off."

Congress has been of no help whatsoever. Mandates requiring certain ethanol percentages in gasoline composition are chopping down refiners' market share at the pump.

Refiners are undercut by the subsidies ethanol producers get that refiners don't. Ethanol producers are also protected by high tariffs on overseas ethanol, while imported gasoline comes in duty-free. This brings in a lot of competition for refiners.

Given these conditions, is it any wonder companies such as Valero are looking for friendlier climes?