Obama backs some drilling, tapping oil stockpile
Barack Obama put forward a broad energy plan Monday designed to end U.S. reliance on imported oil within 10 years and shore up his standing amid a tightening White House race and high-anxiety over gas prices.
Obama's proposal, though, includes two significant reversals of positions he has taken in the past: He had steadfastly fought the idea of limited new offshore drilling and was against tapping the nation's emergency oil stockpile to relieve pump prices that have stubbornly hovered around $4 a gallon.
In a speech in Michigan, the Democratic presidential nominee in waiting also endorsed long-term work on hybrid cars and renewable energy sources.
"Breaking our oil addiction is one of the greatest challenges our generation will ever face," the Illinois Democrat told a supportive audience as he embarked on a week to focus on energy issues. "It will take nothing less than a complete transformation of our economy," he said.
Presumed Republican nominee Sen. John McCain, speaking in Pennsylvania, again advocated more oil drilling off the U.S. coast. "Anybody who says that we can achieve energy independence without using and increasing these existing energy resources either doesn't have the experience to understand the challenge that we face or isn't giving the American people some straight talk," he said.
Obama said that U.S. politicians have failed for three decades to deal with the energy crisis, and that McCain has been "part of that failure." He called tapping the petroleum reserves a short-term solution to a long-term problem.
"Like George Bush and Dick Cheney before him," Obama said of the Arizonan, "he sees more drilling as the answer to all of our energy problems, and like them, he's found a receptive audience in the very same oil companies that have blocked our progress for so long. In fact, he raised more than one million dollars from big oil just last month."
I am tired of our country being totally enslaved by foreign oil interests and big oil companies at home.
I would be willing to put up with quite a bit of hardship in order to get it accomplished, I think many Americans would, IF it resulted in being independent from oil forever.
But unfortunately many Americans no longer trust their elected leaders because they do not lead.
Bipartisan effort never occurs anymore, I don't think it has since WWII.
It's a shame and a sham the way America has been sold out by our elected officials to professional lobby groups and special interest donation bankrolls.
I don't think this is what the founding fathers had in mind.
Welcome to Detroit
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