Bush: Raise fuel-efficiency standards

[Canuck_Buck]

President Bush speaks to motorists at a gas station Thursday in Biloxi, Mississippi

Congress first set the passenger car standard for fuel economy in 1975, and it has remained at 27.5 miles per gallon since 1990. The mileage is a weighted average of an automaker's fleet, not a requirement for individual models.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/04/27/congress.oil/index.html

He is the decider....any thoughts?

[Alsatian]

I value freedom, and hence I oppose regulations that limit our freedom. I see a regulation that forces more fuel efficient cars upon us to limit our freedom.

I think you leave it to people to make their own choices. As someone who owns a Chevy Suburban and just paid $83 to fill my tank two nights ago, I'm very likely to make my next car purchase a very fuel efficient car. Our second vehicle in my household is a Toyota Corolla which I imagine gets something like 32 MPG fuel economy, maybe better. At the same time, while I don't like burning the gas in my suburban to commute to work, it is a very suitable vehicle for long distance drives for visiting my family in Illinois (I live in Texas), my wife's family in Oklahoma, taking my three children and their friends to events, going deer/elk/pronghorn hunting. I prefer to be treated like an adult and allowed to make my own choices rather than have the choice thrust down my throat. And I don't think it is just to impose some sort of a monetary penalty on vehicles that don't meet the standard.

I'm not a "greatest good for the greatest number" kind of thinker, especially when those making the calculation of what the greatest good is are probably not going to be of like mind with me.

[NCOutdoors]

Spending and buying habits by the American public is what will control fuel economy. It did in the 70s and it will in the future.