John McCain
Town Hall
Aurora, CO 07/30/08
TRANSCRIPT:
QUESTIONER: What are you going to do to help those of us who are in a situation financially where we can buy gas for our car-
JOHN MCCAIN: A little closer.
QUESTIONER: where we can buy gas for our car to go to work or we can buy groceries, one or the other. How are you going to help us?
MCCAIN: On, on the price of food?
QUESTIONER: And gas. We can't do both.
MCCAIN: Thank you. And obviously, as you know, they are connected. [...] They are not disconnected. And by the way, one of the inflationary impacts on the price of food is the subsidies on ethanol. My friends I went to Iowa in the first caucus, as you know, the first selection of the nominee of the party, and I said I'm against ethanol subsidies because it's gonna distort the market, and it's going to cause inflation, and indeed it did. By the way it lost Iowa. But there's no doubt that the cost of energy has a direct effect on the cost of food. Some American's today, particularly low income American's my friends, are deciding whether to drive or to go to the grocery store because they can't do both. Who is getting hurt the most by this price of a barrel of oil and the cost of a gallon of gasoline, the lowest income American's who are driving the oldest automobiles. And so I can tell you that we need to immediately say and lift the moratorium on offshore drilling. Will that solve our problem? No, but it will help us tell the world that we are on the path reducing our dependency on foreign oil. I mentioned to you earlier, $700 Billion a year, one of the biggest transfers of wealth in history, to countries that don't like us very much, some of it ends up in the hands of terrorist organizations, And we can't afford this transfer of wealth it's enriching too many other people at the expense of the American people. So we need to do the offshore drilling ok? We need to do wind, tide, solar. All the things we all believe in. But we got to do nuclear power. And my friends the French, 80%, 80% of the French electricity ins generated by nuclear power. Now we all want to imitate the French. But the point is, and what do they do and what do they do with the spent Nuclear fuel, they reprocess it. We have to store the spent nuclear fuel and we have to reprocess it, we have to do both and we can do both. I want to build 45 nuclear power plants in America by 2030. That will create 700,000 jobs. And green technologies, my friends I was in Detroit recently and I saw . I saw the new General Motor's Volt. This is a leap forward in technology, and I want to give American's a $5,000 dollar tax credit to buy one of those, so that they don't have to buy one of these gas guzzlers, so we have to do that. We have to understand that it took us about 30 years to get into this position we're in now, so we're not going to get out of it tomorrow. But I really I believe offshore drilling, that and conservation has had an effect on the "futures" market of the cost of a barrel of oil, as you know it has come down some recently, it's obscene don't get me wrong, but at least we have seen some drop in it. So I believe, I call it the Lexington Project, we can unleash the power and innovation and technology of America, we can do it and we can achieve it and Americans have never ever shirked from a challenge and we've always overcome it and that's the strength of America and we can do that. But we have to do it immediately, we cannot wait. We will start as soon as I'm President of the United States. And I'm sorry to tell you that that has to happen before, it seems that congress is ready to move forward.
FOLLOWUP: In the meantime what are we supposed to do?
MCCAIN: In the meantime I'd like to give you a gas tax holiday. I know that's been much derided, ok. Right here at Wagner for every gallon of diesel fuel is a 25 cent a gallon tax, for every gallon of gasoline it's 18 cents. Is that going to help a lot? No but I think it will help some. I met a guy the other day who has two diesel fueled trucks, he says he's about to go out of business. I said could you stay in business a little longer if you didn't have to pay 25 cents a gallon gas tax, and by the way he's not happy and neither are you that your gas taxes go to things like a bridge in Alaska that goes to an island with 50 people on it. That's 233 million by the way. And so I'd like to give him a little relief there. I'd like to show the world that we are on a clear path to energy independence and we can do it in a much shorter time than anybody, anybody, any expert believes today. So all I can tell you is, and I would remove the ethanol subsidies, I would remove the tariff on imported ethanol which is sugarcane based, which is now 55 cents a gallon. And I would make, I would invest 2 billion dollars in research and development.
LABEL: JM CO 07-30 (KF#4) EFHIS -- ClipG
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Before You Invest In The LGN Revolution...by LittleGuyFAQs1,091 views
Why are they calling for off-shore drilling when the oil CEOs never asked for it?
Why wait for the oil drilling when men are changing their engines TODAY in their own front yards?
I guess John needs to argue for the people who give to him campaign, and you and I are let by the wayside....
pasnell 3 years ago