Rep. Mark Kirk, in his first appearance on WLS' Don Wade & Roma Morning Show since the infamous "shoot on sight" fiasco, was back in rare form today. This time, the North Shore Republican offered listeners a false proposition: either drill for oil offshore or buy oil from the Iranians. Listen here:

Internal mp3

KIRK: We have a fundamental choice. We need to get off oil, but for the time being we are still dependent on it. We can either buy 80 billion barrels of oil from the Iranians or from ourselves. And we should buy it from ourselves.

It's unclear where Kirk got the 80 billion figure.  That aside, his assumption that the United States will be forced to rely on Iran if we don't feed our oil dependency at home is a pretty sneaky way of scaring voters into the GOP's pro-drilling camp.

For over a decade, America has kept Iranian crude out of the domestic supply through a ban on their oil imports and congressionally mandated sanctions on companies that attempt to develop Iran's oil and gas. Given the political discourse in Washington surrounding the Iranian regime -- a reality Kirk is well aware of -- it's incredibly unlikely that the ban will be lifted in the near future. But that doesn't stop Kirk from using the "scary" Tehran regime as his foil, fearmongering about hypothetical Iranian influence on American life instead of arguing for his favored proposal honestly.

But just for fun, let's suppose we did lift the Iranian ban and drop the oil-related sanctions. How would this affect supply?  Robert Naiman recently posed this question to economist Dean Baker, who responded with some interesting data:

"Suppose they [Iran] open up to foreign investment and production goes up 1-2 million barrels a day after a few years...It's 5 to 10 times McCain's offshore drilling."

So by equating these two options -- drill offshore (adding 200,000 extra barrels per day) or open the U.S. market to Iran (1-2 million extra barrels per day) -- Kirk is greatly exaggerating the impact of expanded domestic production. It might be an effective electoral gambit, but more U.S. drilling just won't effect the energy crisis in any meaningful, immediate way.  And Kirk should own up to it.

UPDATE: We looked into Kirk's "80 billion" figure and discovered that the 10th District Republican is actually conflating two very different government estimates. In doing so, he's more than quadrupling the amount of oil thought to be available in the offshore areas under federal moratorium.  Read our full explanation here.