Henry Waxman: “I strongly support this CAFE amendment. It is urgently needed to restore some balance to this legislation. This is the…”

“I strongly support this CAFE amendment. It is urgently needed to restore some balance to this legislation. This is the most important conservation measure that we will have before us in the whole energy bill if this amendment is adopted. If this amendment is not adopted, I want Members to realize that the CAFE provisions in the bill itself are a mirage. The legislation claims to save 5 billion gallons of gasoline by 2010. This sounds like a lot of gasoline, but we are talking about a reduction of 5 billion gallons out of a pool of over 2.5 trillion gallons. So even if the provisions worked as advertised, the 5 billion-gallon reduction translates into only a cut of two-tenths of 1 percent. But, in fact, this bill will not even achieve these minuscule savings. The fine print of the bill contains CAFE loopholes that will allow fuel consumption to increase by 9 billion gallons. The loopholes make the CAFE provisions in this bill a step backward.”