Whenever gas prices soar, Republicans and Democrats join hands to virtuously denounce "gas gouging" by greedy oil companies. Two weeks ago, the House passed legislation against this supposed scourge of the pump. Too bad it's so hard to find evidence that gouging is jacking up prices. Multiple investigations by the Federal Trade Commission since 2000 have come up, well, dry.

Conspiracy theorists say this lack of evidence is proof that the regulators are in bed with the oil companies. But last year, California's Energy Commission undertook its own investigation of a May 2006 price increase and found no smoking gun indicating market manipulation. Today's high prices are the result of a collision among consumers' increasing demand for gas, a shortage of oil-refining capacity and 50 states with different regulations that make it hard to trade gas across state lines.

So why protect consumers from this vaporous phantom? Politics. More than 80 percent of Americans believe that high gas prices are the result of oil company shenanigans rather than market forces, according to the Opinion Research Corp. So passing legislation against gouging is a bit of theater that allows the political class to avoid the hard work of getting Americans to use less gas.

This plays wonderfully in corn-rich Iowa, but corn ethanol will neither replace gasoline nor lower its price. It may even raise gas prices.

First, at the pump, ethanol is priced according to what consumers will pay, not what it costs to make. So, according to research by Soren Anderson of the University of Michigan, ethanol prices follow gas prices very closely. It's unlikely that gas will make a U-turn and start following ethanol.

Second, even if a ready supply of ethanol does put a bit of downward pressure on gas prices, ethanol's real cost is much higher than whatever we shell out at the pump. Consumers actually pay twice for this corny goodness: once when they fill up and once on April 15. In 2006, ethanol makers and sellers received subsidies of $1.87 for every gallon of gas they managed to displace, according to Doug Koplow of Earth Track, a Boston-based consultancy.

Finally, even if we can stomach these nutty subsidies, illogical incentives to tempt automakers to produce ethanol-friendly cars actually increase the amount of oil we use. Blame a little-discussed loophole: In exchange for producing ethanol-ready "flex fuel" vehicles, Congress lets auto manufacturers make their cars less fuel-efficient than corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards require. By 2015, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, that loophole could increase our oil gluttony by 200,000 barrels a day — approximately the amount of crude we now import from Kuwait.

China's oil imports have increased dramatically during the past five years; the country now imports 3.5 million barrels a day, compared with U.S. daily imports of 12.2 million barrels. But it's far less obvious that Americans are really paying a price for this.

If you've been to the mall lately, you've probably noticed that China is making scads of plastic. As the world's second-largest plastic producer, it is furiously turning oil and petrochemicals into everything from lobster souvenirs to sneaker soles. By embedding oil in products, China is, in effect, importing oil on behalf of U.S. consumers — as much as 1 million barrels per day.

The call for more oil wells was reasonable when FDR's policymakers were crafting a U.S. energy strategy 70 years ago, when manufacturing and infrastructure required more energy to grow, and pollution and greenhouse-gas emissions seemed less important. But since 1970, the United States has met 75 percent of its new energy needs through greater energy efficiency rather than new energy supplies, economist Skip Laitner says.

Still, we have plenty of incentives that encourage waste; for example, we let landlords write off energy costs annually but force them to amortize their investments in energy efficiency over many years. As a result, the United States squanders far more fuel than Japan and Western Europe. Approximately 40 percent of the energy that the United States consumes is now lost as waste heat. Eliminating some of that waste would be a quick fix for energy problems.

According to some conservatives, when gas prices are high enough, people will drive less and buy more efficient cars. According to some liberals, nothing but high gas prices or taxes will pry the rich from their fancy sport-utility vehicles and the rest of us from our wasteful routines.

But when conservatives and liberals climb into their cars, they ignore these supposed market forces. Gas prices have doubled in the past five years, and American drivers have hardly blinked. In March 2002, we were paying $474 million a day for gas, according to the Oil Price Information Service. Last week, we paid more than $1.25 billion a day. Over the past five years, we've driven 8 percent more miles overall, according to statistics from the Transportation Department.

High prices have hit the poor the hardest. Gas costs now suck up as much as 15 percent of people's annual income in some poorer rural areas, compared with 2 percent in wealthy suburban areas. Years of laissez-faire energy policies have left the poorest Americans struggling to get to work so they can buy more gas to get to work.

We can't afford to continue blathering about gouging, ethanol and China. It's time policymakers abandoned the theater and started the hard work of remodeling the U.S. economy to get more bang out of that $3.18 gallon.

Lisa Margonelli, an Irvine fellow at the New America Foundation, is author of "Oil On the Brain: Adventures From the Pump to the Pipeline." She wrote this commentary for The Washington Post.