The Energy Bill Passes - A Great Step in the Right Direction

Good news. The energy bill that included the biofuel mandate I talked about last week passed the House today, 314 to 100. This is an excellent step in the right direction, partially because of the biofuels, but also because it includes the first big boost in fuel economy in 32 years, from 25 MPG to 35 by 2020. Obviously, if your chief issue is the environment you're pretty happy about this.

But if your chief issue is the economy or homeland security, you should also be ecstatic. Here's why:
We use 9.2 million barrels of oil a day for transportation, which equals roughly 65 billion gallons of gas a year. If the average MPG is 25, that gas gets us 1.6 trillion miles. But with a MPG of 35, we can travel the same distance for only 47 billion gallons of gas, saving us $56 billion per year, not to mention the 374 billion pounds of CO2 we won't pump into the air each year.



So one way to think of this is as a $56 billion per year TAX CUT. That's a ton of money that the average Joe and Jane will cycle back into other goods in our economy, and not into the hands of governments that hate us.