With both presidential candidates scrambling to respond to the soaring gas prices that have especially bedeviled the Midwest, Vice President Al Gore on Tuesday announced a plan to encourage Americans to buy and develop cleaner, cheaper fuel.
In Philadelphia, Gore proposed a multibillion-dollar trust fund that would pay for tax breaks and other incentives to promote the development of energy sources that would wean the nation from foreign oil. The fund would also aid cities that upgrade their bus systems or build light rail transit systems, and would encourage U.S. firms to invent clean-fuel technologies.
“Our nation’s energy resources should not be so overly reliant on others, so subject to shortages or so vulnerable to oil interests trampling on the public interest,” Gore said. “Our next-stage prosperity must be built on our ability to make sure Americans will be free forever from the dominance of Big Oil and foreign oil.”
Gore later discussed his plan in a phone conversation with Midwestern newspapers, including the Tribune.
Gore, who is embarking on a Midwestern swing, is revealing parts of the plan daily. The portion announced Tuesday, which he said would cost about $80 billion over 10 years, includes modernizing the nation’s power systems, rebuilding old energy plants, helping U.S. companies compete in the growing market for clean energy technology, developing cleaner-running vehicles, and giving tax breaks to consumers who buy those vehicles.
Gore will provide more details Wednesday in Columbus, Ohio, and Thursday in Chicago.
Gore’s likely Republican opponent, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, wasted little time mocking the announcement.
“Al Gore is recycling initiatives designed only to distract voters who are suffering from higher gas prices, which are the product of his administration’s failure to provide a comprehensive national energy policy,” the Bush campaign said.
The two campaigns have been vying for political advantage since oil prices began rising steeply several weeks ago. Gore has emphasized that Bush was an oil executive and has many ties to the industry, and he has blamed “Big Oil” for possible price-gouging.
Gore repeated his criticism of Bush in Tuesday’s conference call.
“When the oil companies decided to support him overwhelmingly this year, they wrote in their own trade publications that he stood for higher oil prices,” Gore said. “Now he’s on the hot seat and trying to distance himself from the people who have provided such overwhelming support for his campaign.”
Bush and his supporters, meanwhile, have said that Gore’s family also has ties to the oil business, and they say the Clinton administration’s lack of an energy policy is to blame for the current crisis.
Bush officials said the Gore initiative focuses so heavily on alternative energy sources, which account for only a small percentage of current energy use, that it would not do much good. Besides, they said, most of Gore’s ideas are rehashed versions of older Democratic proposals.
The vice president, in the conference call, disputed that environmental regulations are partly responsible for high gas prices.
“Everybody, whether the oil industry or in the consumer groups or anybody who has looked at this, believes the environmental factor is no more than a few pennies,” Gore said. On the other hand, he added, “A 500 percent increase in Big Oil company profits in the first part of this year may not be coincidental.”
Gore advocated far-reaching reforms in his 1992 book “Earth in the Balance,” proposing a global plan to change Western society’s relationship with the environment. Gore has been scrupulous about not backing off his positions in the book, but the specific steps he outlined Tuesday were more limited.
Gore said his environmental positions have never been part of a political calculus.
