Price gouging! Windfall oil profits!

Those are words that make many Americans see red, especially when prices skyrocket at the pump. This spring, gasoline costs 70 cents a gallon more than it did last April - a rise that traders say has more to do with market speculation than a fundamental shift in supply and demand.

So what can the US do? That's the question roiling Washington right now. Congress is promising probes, hearings, and maybe new laws reining in windfall profits. Some lawmakers are talking about rebate checks for families. Others are calling for a lower federal gasoline tax.

Tuesday, President Bush waded into the issue, saying the administration would not tolerate "manipulation" of gasoline prices. He also ordered a temporary halt to filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to relieve pressure on crude oil prices.

All the rhetoric will certainly resonate with many Americans, worried or angry about the steep rise in prices this spring. But experts and even members of Congress concede that the federal government has limited ability to push prices down, at least in the short term.

What really matters, they add, is what the government does for the long term - themes that Mr. Bush also sounded in Tuesday's speech. But such moves do little to calm the public uproar as Republicans and Democrats try to get out in front of the issue. "Consumers and motorists think questions should be asked. There is no natural disaster" to push up prices, says Mantill Williams of AAA in Washington. "But there does not seem to be any hard evidence of illegal activities" either.

Next week, many of the major oil companies will report first-quarter earnings, and they're expected to be eye-opening. The industry, which is often called to Capitol Hill to testify, is bracing for yet more investigations and lectures.

"It won't be the first or the last [time]," says Robert Slaughter, president of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association in Washington. "The good news is that studies in the past have largely found that market conditions are responsible for the prices in the industry that we display."

Many gasoline retailers say it's not their fault that prices are rising. Jeff Lenard, a spokesman for the National Association of Convenience Stores, says consumers are complaining that prices are going up even when there are no deliveries of fuel. "They then go inside and start screaming at the clerk," he says. "But what they don't know is the prices are based on the replacement cost - the price the wholesaler tells them they will be paying for their next shipment."

Dennis Jacobe, chief economist at Gallup, says prices have reached the "psychological level" that causes many Americans to become "exercised." He says in polls, Gallup has found that gasoline at $3 a gallon causes many Americans to "recalculate everything."

He says it is reminiscent of the post-Katrina period when prices rose so quickly that Americans postponed major purchases. The economy grew at under 2 percent in that quarter.

The ramifications of a pullback by the consumer are not lost on Washington. Tuesday Bush, in his speech, called the current price "a hidden tax on Americans." He characterized his plan to deal with high energy prices as a "strategy that recognizes the realities of the world in which we live."

Immediately after the speech, Democrats took to the Senate floor to blast any suggestion that the consumers were to blame.

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