WASHINGTON - -President Barack Obama defended his contention Wednesday that a massive climate-change measure would greatly reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil, though government figures raise questions about whether he is overstating its impact.
Obama has intensified his public lobbying effort ahead of an important House vote this week on the Democratic energy proposal, designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions sharply by 2050. The sweeping plan is the president's most ambitious legislative priority, along with his push to overhaul the nation's health care system.
In a White House interview with The Baltimore Sun and five other newspapers, Obama said that if the House proposal becomes law, "we are greatly reducing our dependence on foreign oil." The day before, at a Rose Garden news conference, Obama also made reduced dependence on foreign oil one of his primary selling points.
A check of government statistics, however, suggests that Obama might be magnifying a relatively modest improvement. Estimates initially provided by the White House showed that the reduction in oil imports advertised by the president would amount to a cut of roughly 10 percent in 2030. Last night, aides provided additional estimates from an outside group that tripled the expected savings.
"All this stuff takes a while to ramp up," Obama said during a half-hour discussion in the Roosevelt Room. "This is a huge ocean liner, the U.S. economy, and the question is, can we start changing the direction of that ocean liner? Ten years out, it's not going to necessarily look as if the changes are massive. Twenty years out, suddenly you start really getting huge impacts. Thirty years out, you had a transformative difference in the economy. And that's how we've got to look at it."
He said it was "absolutely" valid to talk about benefits that are two decades away, because "20 years isn't that long in the life of a country. ... I remember where I was in 1989, and you know what? If we had started then, we'd all be pretty appreciative now."
As part of what the White House is calling "Clean Energy Week," the president sat down with a half-dozen reporters, who were invited to meet with him to discuss energy.
Obama said that the combination of the House bill and his recent proposal to improve auto efficiency would save the U.S. "the equivalent of what we import from the entire Persian Gulf."
