Lehrer asks Cheney about oil

[Cocoa]

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/white_house/jan-june06/cheney_02-07.html

<snip>

JIM LEHRER: As you know, Mr. Vice President, it's common knowledge, or conventional wisdom -- let's put it that way -- that if you really want to stop the addiction that you can do it quickly one or two ways or a combination. First of all raise the mileage standards dramatically on cars, and the other just to slap a federal -- increase the federal gasoline tax. That would put people out of their cars or reduce the addiction. But the administration is against both of those ideas, right?

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: Correct.

JIM LEHRER: Now why?

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: We have raised the mileage standard in the past as part of the last energy bill. We also believe -- I believe that the -- from the standpoint of efficiency, that we have over time gotten to be much more efficient users, if you will, of energy.

If you look back to 1980 -- 25 years ago, roughly -- we used twice as much energy as we do today per unit of output in our economy. We've gotten twice as efficient. That's in part a response to market forces, to the cost of energy, the fact that prices have gone up and people have adjusted accordingly.

We are generally not enthusiastic about big tax increases. Big tax increases impose burdens on the economy, and the money being taken out of the hands of private citizens and spent by government, and government oftentimes doesn't spend it nearly as efficiently or as effectively from the standpoint of long-term economic growth and the creation of jobs and so forth as will the private sector. So we have generally resisted and I think will continue to resist the notion that a solution to our gasoline problem, for example, is a big tax on gasoline.

JIM LEHRER: So it's an ideology problem, right?

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: No, it's a philosophy problem.

JIM LEHRER: That's what I meant.

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[Kagemusha]

1. So stopping gas wastage isn't worth tax increases

because that will put more money in the hands of the evil government.

[AnnInLa]

2. If his mouth is open -----