Democrats unveil own energy plan
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As usual the Democratic Leftist Socialists are suddenly interested in conservation. In all the eight years of Clinton they never once peeped about making the US energy independant. Even Jimmy Carter offered tax incentives to insulate your home. I personally took advantage of Jimmy's program and saved a lot of money up front and a lot more in heating/cooling bills. Clinton purposefully set up road blocks to the mining of the world's cleanest coal in Utah, building modern, safe, and clean nuclear power plants, refineries, and transmission lines to move the electricity. And now after a decade of Green Activism the Democrats are again offering empty promises. And their goal has nothing to do with producing a single watt more energy. It is entirely based on political demogoguing the issue to get themselves reelected. The Democrats attitude about the US: promise them anything-they are too stupid to know the difference.
By KAREN MASTERSON
May 15, 2001, 11:40PM
Copyright 2001 Houston ChronicleWASHINGTON -- House Democrats unveiled a national energy plan Tuesday that promotes conservation over production and draws battle lines against a White House plan due out this week that calls for more oil drilling and at least 1,300 new power plants.
Gathered at an Exxon station 12 blocks from the Capitol, a half-dozen key Democrats attempted to portray President Bush as a friend of Texas oil industries, not consumers.
"We need the president to learn he doesn't work for the oil companies anymore, he works for us," said Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., referring to Bush's years as an oil executive.
But more than anything, Democrats sought to distinguish themselves from the GOP and carve out energy policy initiatives they intend to carry into a crucial political battle over control of Congress in 2002.
"It's time for us to have an energy policy that listens to the people of this country and responds to their concerns," House Democratic leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri said outside the gas station Tuesday.
A recent Gallup Poll found 47 percent of the public favors a green approach to energy policies, while 35 percent prefers a boost in energy production. And although the public is nearly split on nuclear power, a majority opposes drilling in the Arctic wilderness.
However, in a sign that the White House message is catching on, the number of Americans who see conservation as the best way out of an energy crunch dropped from 56 percent two months ago.
At issue is which party can portray itself as a friend of the environment, while also appearing to be capable of tackling serious energy problems that range from the California electricity shortage to the country's insatiable thirst for oil.
Bush's plan, which Vice President Dick Cheney will unveil Thursday, is expected to call for a combination of tax incentives and relaxed environmental regulations for new power plants, including nuclear power, over the next 20 years.
And the Bush plan is expected to call for continued reliance on coal and push for oil exploration in the Alaskan Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other federal lands now closed to oil exploration.
Bush has said such policies are necessary to meet the country's long-term demand for energy, and to avoid the shortages that already have caused blackouts and brownouts in Western states, and could hit other areas of the country this summer.
As for high gas prices, Bush has said there is little he can do in the short term, except to push for retroactive tax cuts that put more money in people's pockets this year.
Unlike his education and tax cut proposals that arrived on Capitol Hill with detailed legislative instruction that House Republican leaders have tried to follow almost to the letter, the president's energy policy is not expected to be accompanied by proposed legislation.
Instead, administration officials have said that the White House energy policy is designed to nudge Congress toward the easing of complicated regulations that for years have discouraged construction of new power plants and expansion of oil refineries.
Bush's plan also is expected to include environmentally friendly recommendations to complement, not replace, production. Those recommendations include tax incentives for hybrid automobiles and research and development of alternative energy sources such as wind and solar energy.
The Democrats' plan would surpass Bush's environmental overtures, making them central to answering the country's long-term energy needs.
Democrats also would concentrate on conservation by placing emissions standards on sport utility vehicles and air conditioners, and fuel efficiency requirements on all trucks, sport utility vehicles and minivans.
To help ease oil shortages and resulting high gas prices, Democrats called on Bush to look toward the country's strategic oil reserves and ask oil-producing countries to release more crude.
The Democrats' plan also would place federal caps on the amount utilities may charge consumers, answering a call from California's Democratic governor to help control high prices public utility companies have had to pay for wholesale electricity.
"The energy plan offered by the Democrats on the Hill has some areas of overlapping commonality with the plan that the president is about to propose, and the president looks forward to working with Congress on those areas," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.
But he added that some parts of the Democratic plan "do not go in the right direction," including the electricity price caps and tapping the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Cheney defended Bush's plan in an interview with Reuters, absolving OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, of blame for record-high U.S. gasoline prices.
Cheney said he saw little need for Bush to try to pressure oil-rich nations into increasing crude production.
"A big part of our difficulty today with respect to gasoline prices doesn't have anything to do with the price of crude," Cheney said.
The Bush administration charges that refineries are unable to pump out enough oil to satisfy demand, shortening the supply and causing prices to go up.
"The country can make the amount of gasoline the country needs," said Gene Edwards, a vice president of Valero Energy Co. in San Antonio.
But he said his company's refineries -- already running at full capacity -- would need to expand to meet needs.
Edwards said the Bush plan would help, particularly if it encourages Congress to establish tax incentives, expedites permitting and offers less cumbersome environmental standards for building and expanding refineries.
But Bush's plan to focus on meeting demand instead of reducing it frustrates Democrats.
"The vice president is wrong when he says conservation is a "personal virtue' " and not a national energy policy, Inslee said, referring to a statement Cheney made a few weeks ago. "It's also an economic virtue."
Meanwhile, House Republicans called the Democrat's plan inadequate at best.
"It's like steroids: a plan that may make you look good in the short term, but will hurt you in the long term," said Rep. J.C. Watts, R-Okla., chairman of the House Republican Conference.
Here is another idiotic statement by a failure of a former President of the US. This is the same Democrat-Liberal who kissed and hugged Leonid Brezshnev, a past Soviet Union dictator, who was grossly ugly, probably the ugliest of all the Soviet dictators. Then Carter said, "They lied to me" when the Soviets invaded Afganistan after they promised Carter that they wouldn't. So this idiot now thinks that it's not so bad. Kiss my ass, Jimmy C.!
Carter Says Energy Crisis Not Bad
The Associated Press
Thursday, May 17, 2001; 11:12 a.m. EDTWASHINGTON –– Jimmy Carter said the nation's current energy problems are not as severe as the energy crisis he faced as president in the 1970s.
"No energy crisis exists now that equates in any way with those we faced in 1973 and 1979," Carter said Thursday in an article in The Washington Post. He noted that world energy supplies are adequate and stable, and "automobiles aren't waiting in line at service stations"
Two major oil crises struck the U.S. economy in the 1970s – first in 1973 and then in the late 1970s, during Carter's presidency – as major oil exporters reacted to the Iran hostage crisis, causing gas lines and supply shortages. The Democratic president was defeated in 1980, partly because of fallout from the energy crisis.
Carter said the country should continue the policies of his administration, seeking a balance between conservation and new energy production.
He also renewed his opposition to Bush administration plans to drill in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In 1980, Carter signed a bill that protected the refuge's 1.5 million-acre coastal plain, where the oil is, while opening 95 percent of Alaska's coastal areas to oil exploration.
"Some officials are using misinformation and scare tactics to justify such environmental atrocities as drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge," Carter wrote. He added that drilling advocates "are careful to conceal the facts that almost none of the electricity in energy-troubled California is generated from oil."
© Copyright 2001 The Associated Press