John McCain: Town Hall Meeting 03/03/08

John McCain
Town Hall
Waco, TX 03/03/08

TRANSCRIPTION:
QUESTIONER: "...we cannot pay $5, $6, $7 a gallon for gas...it's got to be fixed or this country will go down."

McCain: "Thank you sir. I totally and completely agree with you. You may have seen, at one point, our oil was at $103 a barrel. My friends, half of our trade deficit now is to pay for imported oil.

"You will now be spending over $400 billion a year on imported oil, half of our trade deficit. Much of that money goes to countries that don't like us very much and some of that money will end up in the hands of terrorist organizations. [...] There is a compelling requirement for energy independence and oil independence because of a national security issue and those I just said.

"But also, my friends I believe that climate change is real and, if we're going to eliminate or reduce greenhouse gas emissions we have to have alternate forms of energy as well and my friends, that's tide, wind, solar and it's also nuclear.

"It's also nuclear power. Nuclear power's got to be, in my view, part of any way of seriously addressing this issue. By the way, the French (we always imitate the French)--80% of their electricity is generated by nuclear power [...].

"It will be a national priority to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil. We must do it. It's a national security issue."

Audience member: "...get the price to $40/barrel. Everyone can live with that."

MCCAIN: "You know the problem is we've got India and China, both growing economies, both making demands on a finite resource. I'd like to tell ya I can see it going back down to $40 a barrel, but I haven't met anybody yet that knows that unless there is a dramatic reduction of our dependence on it.

"So, and that means we have to be totally independent on it so we don't care whether it's $40 a barrel or $450 a barrel. We've got to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil."

LABEL: JM TX 3-3 (JC#115) AGKTZZ - ClipS

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Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• John
• McCain
• Economy
• Trade
• Oil
• fuel
• gas
• alternate
• energy
• climate
• change
• tracking
• 03/03/08