An excerpt from Senator Bingaman’s statement on the Senate floor announcing his decision to cosponsor of S.2025, The Vehicle and Fuel Choices for American Security Act:
“In thinking about more efficient use of oil, we need to face up to the fact that most of our oil is consumed in the transportation sector. Growth in transportation demand for oil is the single largest factor in the growth of our dependence on imported oil. So improving the efficiency of our use of oil and natural gas–these were the areas, frankly, in which last year’s Energy bill turned in its weakest performance.
“The Senate adopted a number of reasonable proposals to promote more efficient use of oil and natural gas when we passed our version of the bill, but the most significant of those provisions we passed in the Senate had to be dropped in conference because of the strong opposition from our colleagues in the House of Representatives. These Senate-passed provisions included mandating an economywide oil savings target, increasing tire efficiency standards, and implementing a renewable portfolio standard for electricity.
“Since the passage of last year’s Energy bill, there has been continued interest in these proposals, and last year a bipartisan group of Senators, led my Senators Bayh, Brownback, Lieberman, and Coleman, introduced a comprehensive bill, S. 2025, the Vehicles and Fuel Choices for America Security Act. That bill provides a mix of energy policy and energy tax incentive proposals aimed at moving our economy toward both a more efficient use of oil and a more diverse future mix of transportation fuels, including biofuels. I strongly support many of those proposals. I am joining them as a cosponsor of that bill.
“Because that bill contained both policy and tax provisions, it was referred to the Finance Committee. Yet many of the provisions of this bill are in the jurisdiction of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which ought to review and report those provisions to the full Senate. For that reason, I am joining with a number of those sponsors of S. 2025 to introduce a new bipartisan bill this week that will take those energy policy provisions and put them in a bill that will be referred to the Energy Committee. In this way, we will have a starting point for what I hope will be an effective and bipartisan committee process in the tradition of the bipartisan leadership on energy that our committee enjoyed under Senator Domenici’s leadership last year in the passage of the Energy bill.
“Among the most important provisions of S. 2025 and the new bill will be an emphasis on an expanded plan for economywide oil savings. The President would be required to come forward with a plan to cut our oil use from projected levels by 2.5 million barrels of oil per day by 2016, 7 million barrels of oil per day by 2026, and 10 million barrels of oil per day by 2031. ”