With National Security Now An Issue, Would The Senate Raise Fuel Economy Standards?
by Steve I’ve written several times over the last week on gas prices and a growing bipartisan concern that as a matter of national security the United States must reduce its consumption of foreign oil. The concern is coming from a group of national security, political, and military leaders from the Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton administrations, who all believe that our reliance on foreign oil supplies from unstable parts of the world, coupled with a runaway domestic demand for oil had made us very unsafe economically. Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards were set back in the 1970’s, but efforts to raise such standards were blocked by Newt Gingrich’s GOP House in 1995 for the remainder of the decade. An effort to break this freeze on raising the CAFE standards in 1999 were dealt a blow when continuing the ban was attached to the annual transportation budget, forcing Clinton to sign the bill and thereby losing a last chance to lift the ban on raising the fuel standards before th
