President Bush today tackled an array of subjects in a press conference with reporters.
The topics included: the state of the U.S. economy, including high energy and food prices; the progress of military operations in Afghanistan; the plans for extra spending on the war in Iraq; presidential relations with Congress; the decision by former President Jimmy Carter to meet with leaders of the terrorist group Hamas; and Bush’s expectations of how the next president will approach the war on terror.
A Senate Republican committee leader today blamed an ongoing global food crisis on “decades of misguided environmental and energy policies.”
James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the top Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, said worldwide access to food is declining and prices are skyrocketing because of meddling politicians bureaucrats in Washington who have been afraid of expanding energy supplies.
Current policy that has led to the consumption of more corn as ethanol-based fuel rather than as food “has skewed common sense and has violated the principles of a sound energy policy,” Inhofe said on the Senate floor.
He urged Congress to revisit its December 2007 biofuel mandate and admit that it made a mistake by implementing it, and he said the Environmental Protection Agency should review its statutory options to relieve the impact of the mandate.
House Republicans today interrupted the Democrats’ debate on a bill to protect beaches in order to badger the Democrats about their failure to pass a promised “commonsense plan” to lower oil prices. The office of House Minority Leader Roy Blunt, R-Mo., compiled a video that recapped the floor confrontation.
With gasoline prices now averaging more than $3 a gallon and likely to rise in the short term, the incentive for America to adopt alternative energy sources. But the Natural Resources Defense Council is warning that liquid coal is not the right answer.
Sen. James Inhofe joined five of his Republican colleagues this week in introducing a bill aimed at reviving plans for a nuclear-waste repository at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert to handle the spent nuclear fuel currently spread among dozens of states.
Inhofe, R-Okla., explained the proposal in a speech on the Senate floor. “The debate is no longer in existence, whether a repository should be built at Yucca Mountain. That decision was made in 2002. The task that remains is to develop a respository that protects public health and safety and the environment.”
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