The last time Congress did anything to improve the fuel efficiency standards of American automobiles, Gerald Ford was President. This December, the House of Representatives has worked to update the profoundly obsolete standards for fuel efficiency, however, by passing the Creating Long-Term Energy Alternatives for the Nation Act, which would require automobile manufacturers to have a fleet-wide average of 35 miles per gallon by the year 2020. The Union of Concerned Scientists reports that the increased fuel efficiency would save 1.1 million barrels of oil every day.
Given the economic, environmental and foreign policy stakes involved in fuel efficiency, what kind of fool wouldn’t vote for the Creating Long-Term Energy Alternatives for the Nation Act? The Ron Paul kind of fool.
Congressman Ron Paul didn’t even bother to show up to vote on the Creating Long-Term Energy Alternatives for the Nation Act. He’s decided that there are nore important things for him to work on… like promoting himself through his campaign. It must be nice for Ron Paul to see his name in the newspaper. Seeing his name in the congressional roll call of members of Congress who actually show up to do their jobs doesn’t give him the same thrill, I guess.
The problem isn’t just that Ron Paul is lazy as a member of Congress, however. It’s that he has declared his opposition to increasing fuel efficiency standards. Ron Paul wants to do away with fuel efficiency standards, and let automobile manufacturers make cars as wasteful as they want to make. If General Motors wanted to make a car that could move only one mile per gallon of gasoline, that would be fine, according to Ron Paul’s plan.
On this issue, as in many others, Ron Paul is a free market fetishist. For fuel efficiency, “My answer to energy is to let the market work. Let supply and demand make the decision. Let prices make the decision,” he says.
Allowing as much waste and pollution as people want to make, with the knowledge that future generations will have to pay the price, is not the kind of philosophy we need to see entering the White House in January of 2009.
(Sources: Library of Congress; Washington Post, December 6, 2007; Grist, October 16, 2007)
Didn’t you know? Fuel efficiency is unconstitutional!
According to Ron Paul, the government doing anything worthwhile is unconstitutional.