Charlie Melancon: “I think about Americans, myself as an American, and how spoiled we are with just being able to get in our car and go…”

“I think about Americans, myself as an American, and how spoiled we are with just being able to get in our car and go where we want, when we want. I like to tell people, and it's not that I should be bragging on it, because I'm not, but I think I'm probably a typical American family man. I have got a Suburban and a Tahoe, I mean, that's not good, but I have got a boat. My son has a boat. We like to hunt, and we like to fish. We have lifestyles that we have been fortunate enough that we can live. But now we're coming to a point in time where instead of maybe having a Suburban and a Tahoe, I could do with just having one and have a more efficient vehicle that got better mileage. Part of what we are talking about in the energy efficiency system CAFE limits. Now, you can get to the limits drastically, as Mr. Matheson expressed, by just saying, by year 2015 or 2018, you have got to reach a certain limit for automobiles and trucks, and, you know, just damn everybody else, doesn't matter about the jobs, let's just get there. Or you can take it as a curve that takes you to that point, maybe not as acutely as a straight line, and says that you got to get there by 2022, and you have got to achieve some goals on the way up there, that doesn't provide that we lose the manufacturing jobs and the manufacturers. I mean, after World War II, there were 33 vehicle types in America, our labels, as they call it. There are 335 now, different vehicle labels out there in the United States.”