American Maggie

America sends almost a billion dollars per day overseas to buy oil.  When we do, we are directly or indirectly bankrolling dictators who despise us, who reinvest our money to support terrorist groups and who spread anti-American sentiment throughout South America and the Middle East.  Our dollars buy their high-tech weapons arsenals, help them destabilize our allies and fund their anti-American propaganda efforts.  We are literally giving our enemies the wherewithal to attack us and to challenge American leadership internationally. 

Our foreign oil addiction also translates into economic weakness.  As a petroleum-reliant country, the global price of oil affects virtually every aspect of our economy.  Our markets are susceptible to flare-ups of unrest in the Middle East, deliberate manipulations of oil prices by foreign regimes and supply disruptions – whether due to natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina or economic warfare like the oil embargo of 1973.  At a time when we are working to grow our economy, the rising cost of oil will slow those efforts.  Worst of all, the billions we send overseas to purchase oil are dollars that are not buying American products or creating American jobs—instead they are strengthening the economies of our political adversaries and deepening our trade imbalance.

Every American president for over thirty years has promised action on achieving energy independence, but each year the problem grows worse.  It is past time for an effective, united campaign to accomplish this goal, and Republicans should be at the forefront of this effort.   Our plan must be open to all strategies to achieve independence from foreign oil: domestic oil and coal produced and consumed in ecologically responsible ways, bio-fuels, nuclear power, wind, solar, thermal and a host of alternative energy technologies only now coming to market.  America needs to be at the forefront of alternative energy technology and production, not only for the sake of the environment, but for the sake of our national security and economy.

Recently, the American Security Council Foundation, an organization primarily known for its historic role in promoting the philosophy of “peace through strength” during the Reagan Administration, addressed this challenge by launching an initiative called Project Independence, lead by Governor George Pataki.  The goal of Project Independence is to replace every drop of oil that we import from OPEC and Venezuela with domestically-produced energy over the next ten years.  We can achieve this goal by enacting three commonsense initiatives. 

First, we must develop a diversified supply of homegrown energy to replace foreign oil.  The place to start is transportation, which accounts for 71% of our national petroleum consumption.  Without choosing winners and losers, we need to enact national policies that incentivize private sector production of vehicles that run on natural gas, hydrogen, ethanol, biodiesel, electricity and other petroleum alternatives.  Imagine if Congress passed a bill repealing federal income and sales tax collection on the first 5 million affordable cars that achieve a fuel economy of 70 miles per gallon.  These are the bold market-based policies that will get new petroleum alternative technologies to the marketplace more quickly and cheaply.

Second, we must build the infrastructure needed to deliver the energy of the future across America.  In the 1950s the U.S. built the interstate highway system to improve our national security.  In this century we need to make the same commitment to developing an interstate alternative fuel system.  Key initiatives include tax incentives and immediate expensing of capital investment for the installation of alternative fuel pumps at service stations across the country.  Another necessary step is updating the U.S. power grid to handle increased power generation demand due to new technologies like electric cars and the development of renewable energy corridors, which will allow homegrown energy projects like wind and solar farms to flourish.  We need to install a secure and interactive national “smart grid” that supports these projects by improving carrying capacity and allowing utilities to more precisely manage power delivery according to demand.   

Third, we can cut our consumption of foreign oil by simply reducing our overall energy usage.  The most effective way to do that is by improving efficiency and conservation.  Adopting a national “green building” tax credit and requiring federal government agencies to make meaningful reductions in their annual energy consumption are just some of the steps we should take.

The three simple components of Project Independence—developing a diversified supply of homegrown energy, building the energy infrastructure of the future and improving efficiency—aren’t new.  In fact, there have been decades of empty rhetoric supporting such efforts.  A week rarely passes when a prominent politician has not made an announcement concerning a dramatic alternative energy proposal addressing one aspect or another of the energy puzzle.  Unfortunately, politicians on both sides of the aisle have lacked the foresight or commitment to undertake the coordinated, sustained effort necessary to achieve real change. 

It’s time for Republicans to take the lead in demanding that our energy dollars be redirected toward the creation of American energy sector jobs, the development and manufacture of cutting edge alternative energy products that US entrepreneurs can market to the rest of the World, and to building the energy infrastructure needed to support a modern nation.   Let’s make it a top Republican priority to take meaningful action to reverse our nation’s dangerous dependence on foreign oil.  

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Kerry Murphy Healey, former Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, serves as Co-Chair of Project Independence, an initiative of the American Security Council Foundation.