2008 Polls National | Iowa New Hampshire South Carolina Florida | General Election

---

June 13, 2007

Special Report Roundtable - June 13

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SENATOR DIANNE FEINSTEIN, (D) CALIFORNIA : What the China situation, or the other country's situation shows, is that these automakers, in all of these countries, build the automobile that the requirements for mileage state. And they don't fight it, they just do it.

SENATOR CARL LEVIN, (D), MICHIGAN: When I hear about China, I got to tell you, ask the American people. Do they want to drive the same sized vehicles as is the average vehicles in China? Ask the American people. And they will give you the answer, "No."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: You will note that the letter after the names of those two senators, Senator Feinstein and Senator Levin, was a "D." And it was the "Ds" who today in the Senate and their disagreements in the House as well were fighting among themselves over what to do to reduce the cost of fuel and out dependence on foreign oil and all that good stuff.

Some thoughts on this now from Fred Barnes, Executive Editor of the Weekly Standard, Jeff Birnbaum, columnist for the Washington Post, and the syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, FOX News contributors all.

What to make of this? Jeffrey?

JEFF BIRNBAUM, WASHINGTON POST: Well, on that particular fight, I think that we should expect that there will be, for the first time in 20 years, an increase--a required increase in the efficiency of vehicles.

John Dingell, a "D" from Michigan who is the head of the Energy and Commerce Committee in the House and one of the staunchest supporters of the auto industry, which he represents part of in Michigan, has told representatives of the major auto companies that they are not going to get a lot of good news out of this energy bill. And, in fact, they should expect these so-called CAF_ standards to be imposed in some way, and the auto industries will be forced to increase their efficiency.

HUME: Can they pass this out of the House and Senate?

BIRNBAUM: I think they can and I think, despite the president's veto threats on the issue, that there is some middle ground which Senator Levin is developing, by the way, to--

HUME: Democrats can end up compromising with one another?

BIRNBAUM: Yes and I think that when that compromise happens, that will be an important centerpiece if this Energy Bill in general is going to pass. And I think it has maybe a 50 or 60 percent chance of doing so.

FRED BARNES, WEEKLY STANDARD: That's probably right, and I think they probably will have some increase in the CAF_ standards.

But here is what is not in the bill--

HUME: That's called Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency standards. So that the thing that you get the sheet on the back window of your car when you but it and it tells you what your mileage is, and it's got to be a certain EPA level.

BARNES: Well, the whole fleet does, it's an average of the who fleet of the automakers.

Look, if these people, and I mean Republicans and Democrats in the Senate, are interested in energy independence of moving just a little bit in that direction, CAF_ standards are not going to help in the short run, they won't go in. When you do reach this thing it's a goal in 2020 or 2017 or something like that.

What are you going do now? And that is designed to reduce demand. In other words, your car gets more mileage, you won't buy as much gas. And so, what we need to do is increase production, oil production in the United States.

And there is nothing in the bill that does that. There will be an amendment urging more offshore production. And today, a Republican amendment by Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, a Republican, wanted to streamline the process whereby more refineries come online so more oil can be refined into gas, something that is desperately needed in the United States. It lost almost on a party line vote.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: This is product of the left wing of the Democratic Party. I love that Feinstein invoked China as a paragon here. It's not just they have small cars, it's a police state. If a CEO of a company that doesn't do what the government orders it, it is shut down, or the guy ends up in jail--

HUME: Last time I was there, there were more bicycles than cars anyway.

KRAUTHAMMER: And the guy could end up hanged as well. I suppose the Democrats would love to have that control over the American economy.

But as Fred says, there is nothing here on production, there is nothing here about Arctic Refuge, where we could be producing a million barrels a day of American oil with the money going into the American economy. There's nothing on nuclear. It's not serious about lowering prices or about increasing production.

And apart from the imposing regulatory, extremely inefficient fuel efficiency standards on cars, which would probably kill off the big three American automakers, who are already near bankruptcy, this is a classic liberal free lunch. You are sitting in Washington and you mandate.

One example in the bill, they want to mandate a quintupling of ethanol production. What is that going to do? We already see its effects. We have had an increase in the price of food of 7 percent over the last three months because all this ethanol is taking farmland out of food production and increasing its price.

So, essentially, what the liberals are doing here in Congress is taxing gasoline, but hiding it in your Rice Krispies. When you pay for that, you are going to pay an increase in price, which is essentially a tax, but is the most inefficient way of do it.

BIRNBAUM: I'm not sure that you can lay all this on the liberal left. It was in the State of the Union that President Bush suggested increasing these bio fuels. Not quintupling it, as you say, but very close. This calls for $36 billion gallons of this annually by 2020. The president's proposal was 35 billion. It doesn't seem like that much of a difference.

KRAUTHAMMER: But the regulation on, it's across the board. There is no increase in production. There is nothing but standard regulations, impositions, bureaucratic standards imposed on auto companies, on production. And it even has a provision of pursuing oil companies for unconscionably excessive price gouging.

(CROSSTALK)

BARNES: There is one other thing in there, and that is they are gong to regulate, they are going to have efficiency standards for washing machines and dryers. I hope it doesn't do for those what federal standards have done for toilets.

HUME: Next up with out panel, we'll talk about the latest round of violence in Gaza and what that means for the future of Palestinians. Stay tuned.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HUME: That is the scene in the Gaza Strip today, and its violence is Palestinian upon Palestinian, representatives of Hamas fighting against the supposedly ruling Fatah party, which doesn't seem to be ruling anything anymore, least of all in Gaza.

There is a chance that this all could spread into the West Bank where the Fatah people are more dominant and took retaliatory action, four more kidnappings against Hamas people today. The Israelis are really not engaged in this at the moment.

Charles, what does this tell us? What does this mean? And where is this going?

KRAUTHAMMER: This is the beginning of the Palestinian civil war. Round one happened this week, and it's over. Hamas has won in Gaza, it will take it over. And it is the worst elements.

As one high administration official said the other day, these are the extreme elements of the extremists. And this is essentially the first Palestinian independent territory, Israel is out of Gaza, and it will now become a terrorist state.

And it will also be, this is extremely important, a client of Iran. Hamas is supplied and financed by Iran. Iran has now a constellation of allies and clients in that region, the way the Soviets had around the world. It's got Hamas now in Gaza, it's got Hezbollah in Lebanon, it's got Sadr in Iraq. And it has a country, Syria, as its only Arab ally in that region.

So it's a crescent. It's not a Shiite crescent because Hamas is Sunni, but it's an Iranian client crescent, and it is the beginning of a general Iranian, Islamist revolutionary infiltration of the Arabs. Which is why Egypt is afraid, because Gaza has a border with Egypt, and why it's the beginning of a great struggle between Persian, non-Arab, Shiite and radical Iran with all of these Arabs.

So it's the beginning of a new era in the Middle East.

BARNES: This is also, I think, the end of an era if this continues the way it's going, and it has every indication to do so. It is the end of a hope for peace between Israel and its neighbors, especially the Palestinians.

HUME: Israel pulled out of Gaza.

BARNES: That's right.

HUME: And this is what the result has been.

BARNES: This has been the result. And it will probably mean a weakening of the Palestinian government, in fact, a division of it. Gaza looks like it is about to fall into the hands of Hamas. The West Bank, on the other hand, still appears to be in Fatah hands and may remain so.

And so the Palestinians will not just be weakened and lose part of their control, but will be divided in a way that will make it impossible to deal with them for any future peace prospects. Well, from us, the United States, or Israel.

BIRNBAUM: 5.4 Yes, obviously, I mean who would be the partner for peace? I mean Hamas is totally dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the Israelis. Half of Fatah is. The extremists as well and, you know, Charles mentioned a government official that described, on the one hand, Hamas is the extreme extremists, and then you have the mainstream extremist who's are on the other side, and they are fighting each other.

Just look what happened when the Israelis turned over Gaza to the Palestinians. Now, you might think that the Palestinians would have a chance to turn this into some place that was a worthwhile, where people would want to live, where you would have a thriving economy. It turned into a state of nature.

And now we see Hamas taking over. And correct me if I am wrong, Charles, but I think the Egyptians have closed the border with Gaza. The Egyptians don't want to have anything to do with these people either.

---

Sponsored Links

About Us | Contact | Advertise | Privacy Policy         © RealClearPolitics 2006