war on coal is exactly what we need. but you have to understand that gets us to that alternative energy future. windmills are great, solar power is great. it s not enough to power our country right now. if this was 1976, you would be saying the same thing about catalytic converters on cars. that was a burden on the consumer, they had to pay for it, yet our cities are clean. and if you go to mexico city in the summer, it s not like that, or beijing. there are some benefits beyond jobs to making your environment better. thanks, guys. that s got to be the last word. more war of words over who the irs was targeting. why, then, is the irs tagging anyone at all? that s at the bottom of the h r
necessity for most people, the way this country works now. and people pouring more money into it means they ll spend less money on other things, and we need to get to a more it will alternative energy future, but really right now there is no practical solution to cars and claims other than oil. i didn t say that, lisa. now, you had me until the alternative issue. we should just cancel arguments that don t make sense. arguments that don t make sense that the president can do something about the price of oil. and how americans are somehow driving the price of oil up. we re not. it s chinese and the indians and everybody else who is. and we have a supply problem. so anyone who says we can go release the oil from the strategic oil reserves knows nothing about it. we are the third largest oil supply in the world right now, definitely agreed. sorry if i misunderstood. no, the last thing which i m challenging you on is that we
we ve known that since the election, since the campaign. he doesn t like big oil. he wants to see an alternative energy future. but that alternative energy future produces zero gasoline for the gas tank. maybe some ethanol at some future point. but that only merely stretches the supply. it doesn t replace oil. and what we need is an independent regulatory commission to take over the management of energy in this country without worrying about day-to-day politics and the two-year, four-year election cycles, which have prevented the nation for 40 years from having any energy sanity as we look into the future. so there s no silver bullet now. but with a short medium, long-term 50-year plan that can survive congressional changes, i think we can get to affordable energy, make sure we have plenty of it, and make sure it s sustainable from an environmental standpoint. independent energy, we ll keep in touch, mr. hofmeister. as you just heard mr. hofmeister
energy efficiency and drilling that could give us an energy policy. one of the points that the new york times columnist always makes is if das goes to $5 a gallon, that would prompt america to fast forward and push towards an alternative energy future. people just don t want to pay that. it could have a positive unintended consequence. i asked him that exactly. he paints a bleak picture in his commentary. in a column he wrote for the daily beast, he talks about when things do get to that point, you know, we re looking at serious civil disturbance potential. we would like to resolve this before we reach the rye sis moment. it may take getting back to the level of cost. can i play something else? he talked about how frus dated the american people will be. they will be frus tratded and they will be angry. the fact that it s an election year, the american people could say the people in office haven t