Senate Democrats Call For Energy Independence by 2020

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In words reminiscent of the Kerry campaign, Senator Maria Cantwell renewed the Democrats’ call to make America Energy Independent by 2020, saying “It’s time to get serious about our energy security.” America needs a plan, Cantwell stated in the Democratic Radio Address on Saturday, that “bets on American ingenuity and investment rather than gambling on the future good will of the Saudi Royal Family and the OPEC cartel…America will be economically stronger and more secure internationally. We must embrace this goal with the same enthusiasm that John Kennedy asked Americans to when sending a man four decades ago to the moon.”

Senate Democrats followed up with a demand for President Bush to comply with the Federal plan to reduce oil dependencies and “ require federal agencies to begin implementing a Clinton-era Executive Order, which established a five-year, 20 percent petroleum savings goal.” In a letter sent to the President on Monday, Oct. 3, 18 Senators “urged the President to extend the order and set a 40 percent savings target for federal agencies by 2020.” The letter also stated that despite the 20% savings target in President Clinton’s Executive Order, the federal government has “reduced its petroleum consumption by less than one percent.”

Strategies presented by the Democrats include an immediate look at price gouging at the pumps, saying 90% of Americans believe price gouging is occurring. Cantwell stated, "Twenty-eight states currently have laws on the books to prevent price-gouging, and we should pass something at the federal level as well.”

The administration was also berated for calling on Americans to conserve, while rejecting true conservation proposals like “accurate fuel mileage for cars and bi-partisan proposals for reducing our dependence on foreign oil by a million barrels a day.”

Senator Cantwell concluded by encouraging Americans to rise to the challenge we face by recalling the words of President John Kennedy. He said we take on these challenges:

"Not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because the goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, and one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win."

"Energy independence is one of the greatest challenges of our generation. The American people are counting on us and we should provide the leadership.

"We can only succeed if we work together.”

Full Text of Senator Cantwell’s Remarks

Letter signed by Senators Cantwell, Bingaman, Reid, Kerry, Wyden, Boxer, Lieberman, Corzine, Feinstein, Feingold, Reed, Clinton, Lautenberg, Durbin, Murray, Dorgan, Bayh, Akaka

http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/?view=plink&id=1399

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1. It is good to see that so many things that Kerry has advocated for years

are becoming main stream among some Democrats.

It makes last November even sadder. We would have a president with a visionnary idea of how to turn the country toward the 21th century.

Progressism includes the word progress in it and Kerry understands perfectly well that you have to use progress to do good, not stay put in last centuries' policies.