Joe Lieberman: “This amendment would replace section 251 in the underlying bill which is the topic of our interest today. Section 251 in…”

“This amendment would replace section 251 in the underlying bill which is the topic of our interest today. Section 251 in the bill sets forth gasoline savings targets as part of our move to help make America energy independent. We instead would put in title I of the DRIVE Act, which many of us introduced earlier this year, which sets oil savings plan requirements that are more ambitious and appropriately so. We all know America is a nation addicted to oil and that addiction is hurting us and our people in many ways. It is saddling consumers with high gas and oil and other fuel prices. It is compromising our foreign policy. It is diminishing the quality of our environment. It is leaving our economy and our very national security subject to political instability in faraway places and to the malicious whims of foreign leaders of oil-producing nations, such as Ahmadinejad of Iran and Chavez of Venezuela. The only real and permanent solution to this problem is to substantially reduce the amount of oil consumed by our transportation sector, which consumes virtually all the oil, certainly the greater part of it, we consume as a nation.”