Gore: Help Fuel-Efficient Technology
Copyright © 2000 The Associated Press.
Jun 27 2000
PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Vice President Al Gore is offering what he hopes will be a balm to drivers pinched by steep gas prices - a ``no new taxes, no new bureaucracies'' energy policy that does nothing about today's prices but aims to cut oil dependence in the long term.
The 10-year package Gore outlined Tuesday centered on $75 billion in tax incentives for the development and use of fuel-efficient and nonpolluting technologies.
``We will say to the nation's investors and entrepreneurs: If you invest in these new technologies, America will invest in you,'' the Democratic presidential contender said.
As Republican lawmakers were criticizing the Clinton-Gore administration in Washington for not doing more to bring down gasoline prices, Gore framed his energy strategy as a way ``to make sure Americans will be free forever from the dominance of big oil and foreign oil.''
Gore tried, in a round of satellite interviews with Midwest TV stations, to place blame with his Republican presidential opponent, George W. Bush. ``My opponent comes out of the oil industry. His experience is as an oil company executive and he (once) called for higher oil prices to boost the oil company profits,'' Gore said.
In the short term, he called for the Federal Trade Commission to hold public hearings, including consumer testimony, as part of its price-gouging investigation into the summer spike in prices.
Longer term, Gore said, ``We will prove once and for all that we can clean up pollution, make our power systems more efficient and more reliable and move away from dependence on others - all with no new taxes, no new bureaucracies and no onerous regulations.''
At a Democratic Party fund-raiser late Tuesday, Gore suggested that today's sticker shock at the pump recalled the oil crisis of 1979-80. ``We're going through an echo of that now, but it's nothing compared to what it was then,'' Gore said.
Bush, for his part, tried to turn the spotlight back on President Clinton and Gore.
``The vice president seems to forget who's been in office for seven years ... and the price of gas has risen steadily since they've been in office,'' the Texas governor said in Michigan.
As alternatives to crude oil, Bush promoted natural gas and increased domestic exploration. He also said that as president he would ``work with my friends'' in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to convince them to increase production.
Squinting into a punishing Philadelphia sun, Gore delivered what his campaign billed as a major address on energy policy with his back to the natural-gas pipelines and smokeless stacks of Trigen, a cleaner-burning power plant serving the Center City neighborhood.
His TelePrompTer malfunctioned and was removed just before he took the stage to the tune of Steve Winwood's ``Higher Love.'' Often criticized as a halting speaker, Gore has recently begun to use the machine for daily policy speeches in these weeks leading up to his crucial address to the Democratic National Convention in mid-August.
Gore has made Pennsylvania, a targeted battleground for the November election, a fixture on his schedule. On Wednesday, Gore was going to Columbus, Ohio, to detail proposed tax incentives for consumers to buy environmentally friendly goods and services.
The bulk of the $75-billion package proposed Tuesday - $68 billion - would go toward, as a press release described it, ``a menu of financial mechanisms such as tax incentives, loans, grants, bonds or other financial instruments to those power plants and industries that come forward with projects that promise to dramatically reduce climate and health-threatening pollution.''
The rest amounted to little more than proposed extensions of current policy, including doubling the tax credit for producers who make electricity from wind, biomass and landfill methane.
Gore also proposed allowing businesses to take accelerated tax deductions for investments in clean technology.
Before returning to Washington for an $850,000 pair of Democratic National Committee fund- raisers, Gore spoke to 6,000 members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and asked them to help keep Bush - ``that other fellow'' - out of the White House.