"People are angry, but they are adjusting." That's how Mantel Williams, spokesman for the American Automobile Club, summed up the community mood over mounting gasoline prices for our Washington Bureau.

"Whenever (auto manufacturers) put a hybrid on the market, there is a waiting list for it," he told reporter John Machacek for a story published Monday. Indeed, a CNN poll in May establish that 60 percent of adults careful buying a hybrid vehicle because of higher gas prices.

Congress, too, is sentiment the high-price pressure to act. Nationwide, gas prices hit a standard of $2.973 Monday, up 64 cents per gallon over last year, according to the U.S. Energy Department. Average prices in the Lower Hudson Valley choice from $3.22 in New City to $3.29 in Carmel to $3.27 in Yonkers, according to an Internet search.

The region's three representatives — Eliot Engel and Nita Lowey, both Democrats, and Sue Kelly, a Republican, are either sponsoring or co-sponsoring "vehicle and fuel choice" bills, as the state's two senators, Democrats Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton. Engel's bill, the "Fuel Choices for American Security Act," is bipartisan legislation intended at reduction 2.5 million barrels of oil daily within a decade, about what we import now from the Persian Gulf region.