Progressive Talking Points 9/27/05

WANTED: Real Leadership on Energy

• Bush could set a good example by conserving energy himself.While Bush encouraged people to limit non-essential trips, he continues to burn fuel at an alarming rate on his trips. Today he makes his seventh trip to the Gulf Coast at a fuel cost of $6,029 per hour, up from $3,974 an hour in the last budget year. For his short trip from the White House to the Energy Department yesterday, the Houston Chronicle noted that his motorcade “included two armored limousines, three stretch utility vans, six black SUVs and a medical truck.”
• Congress continues to push for giveaways to the oil industry. Conservatives in Congress announced plans to “introduce new legislation or amend existing measures to bestow more tax breaks on the industry and provide other incentives left out of the big energy bill Bush signed into law in August,” all while the industry is using Hurricanes Katrina and Rita to raise prices and their profit margins. Right-wingers also want to cut programs that promote energy efficiency and conservation, such as the EnergyStar program and Amtrak funding.
• The auto industry is looking for leadership.The auto industry is looking to Washington to do more to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil. Last week, Ford Chairman and Chief Executive William Clay Ford Jr. sent a letter to President George W. Bush requesting a summit that would “focus on what the auto industry can do to find solutions for alternative fuel resources.” In addition, Jim Press, head of Toyota's U.S. operations, described America's dependence of foreign oil as an "economic problem" and planned to go to Washington in November to lobby lawmakers to make energy independence an issue in the 2008 campaign.