Sure, but only after they dropped the requirement that utilities obtain 15% of their power from renewable fuels by 2020. So it is really only a partial victory, at best. But the White House has already indicated that it is opposed to this measure and the president will, no doubt, veto it. And the beat goes on.

We can do better than see legislation passed calling for better fuel efficiency accross the board. We can make the law of supply and demand work in our favor instead of acting like victims.

The price of gas at the pump for the average American motorist has gone up over 30% since Bush took office. That's a radical change.

Have driving habits changed, though. No. What if a significant group of willing individuals just held back at the pump a little... didn't fill up out of habit but put in $5.00 or $10.00 shy of filling up. Nothing radical. Very do-able.

What if a significant group of willing individuals decided to drive between 58 and 62 miles per hour instead of 60 and 80 miles an hour. That's nothing radical. It's very do-able.

What if a significant group of willing individuals decided that no desitination or reason for driving is so important that it requires passing other drivers on their right or blind side - the side all drivers should exit from in an emergency?

These simple -- very do-able changes -- would have a huge impact in populated California where the governor is Republican and pro-Bush. The more people in more areas, especially densely populated areas who could apply themselves to the best practical degree would only help.

It doesn't take a national three-day boycott of every gas station to make a big and lasting statement.

The supply and demand is neither republican nor democrat. Whoever is in office, when demand goes down, prices go down. It really is THAT simple.

The effects of a little restraint at the pump and on the road multiplied by group of willing and reasonable individuals can go a lot further in terms of effecting positive change than legislation.

If we have sunk to the point where civil people need laws in order to be civil, then neither democrats nor repulicans stand a chance of winning anything. The dinosaurs who provide the fossil in the "fossil fuels" that propel our vehicles will have won...

and only them.

This Senate energy bill would help reduce our dependence on imported oil. Clearly, the Democrats have led the way on renewable energy and fuel efficiency. In fairness, we must also praise those Republicans who share our vision, and who crossed party lines to vote this victory for the American people.

Let me get this straight. The Dems are claiming victory on an energy bill that does what?

It embraces ethanol which is at best a marginal carbon improvement over other fuels but with a host of its own problems. For years the Dems have blamed Bush for putting on blinders when it comes to Science. How are they different?

Ethanol a poor substitute to maintain an unsustainable gas addiction and it completes against food. Already food prices are up 20 to 30% worldwide because of it. How are Dems protecting the poor people by enabling addiction for a few more years?

What return will family farmers have to turn marginal land to grow corn? Enough to pay for oil based fertilizers it will need as they watch their land go to waste? Contrast that to the 100s of billions that AMD, the Oil companies and big business will get.

It took the Republicans 46 years to interrupt the Dems' cycle of corruption but only 12 for the Dems to interrupt theirs. I don't think we have 2 years left for another Dem cycle of corruption.

We don't need a third party what we need to do is to vote for the other guy regardless of party affiliation. It will take less than 20% of the voters to make sure no one serves more than one term no matter how many billions they raise.

THANK YOU frobn for pointing out the GLARING holes in this energy bill

Unless America wises up and moves to REAL renewable energy we're going to be a 3rd world nation in 30 years or less.

of course, our politicians will probably still be standing in tall cotton, while the rest of us pick it for slave wages

We are very proud of our Democrats. They have passed more Bills than the Republicans did in a year. Thanks Democrats. I am so thankful that the writers in here are ignoring the Republican comments. They are so jealous of our ratings compared to their Republican friends, ratings. We know what it is like to have the majority of the people against us. Try harder, Republicans to do the right thing for the people and you will see your ratings come up a bit. The people know we have their pocketbook at the heart of our bills. We have done all these Bills without K Street paying us to do what the Lobbist want.

This country will NOT HAVE ENERGY INDEPENDENCE until this country tells the middle east to kiss off. And WE CAN DO IT. If we tell the oil companies to work with us and not against us. Why cant this country have the balls to truly have ENERGY INDEPENENCE. Why cant we, because we have to kiss everybody's rear ends while the planet earth dies a slow death and takes us with it. But that's right. We have wars to make and people to kill. So who cares about saving the planet. I'm so sick of all this killing and stupidity and MY TAXS going for wars and killing instead of helping people. I wish this country would grow up. But it never will. It loves to kill more then save lifes.

It is some what less then needed, if they can do more next time it would help. A Nash Metro. got 50mpg 40 some years ago, and it was made out of steel, it only seated 2 people but with todays plastic why cant they do better ?

Baby steps, but at least we are beginning to walk toward energy independence. The Republicans want us to be down on our hands and knees crawling.

We will pass even better legislation after the next election when we take control of both the White House and Congress.

This is great!w will have a very hard time to veto this one should it reach his desk and I can`t see any reason why it shouldn`t be on his desk soon!

Very good/I especially like the tightened requirements for SUV's and pickups.

This is pyrrhic victory if anything at all and is no where what is need for independence from oil. A "fleet average" is nothing. With that loophole, auto makers can have, as an example, six models of vehicles. It doesn't matter that five of the models get only 22 mpg and one get 60 mpg. They would meet the fleet average of 35. Yet 5/6 of the their vehicles are still gas guzzling monsters and will be until the American public decides they don't want them anymore.

What's needed is not improvement, but massive overhauls of the way we transport ourselves and our goods. It's going to take a rebuilding of infrastructure of fuel delivery and parking. We will need to build hydrogen fueling stations, rebuild parking ramps and spaces and our houses to recharge electric vehicles.

In short, we need to get away from anything remotely connected to oil, even ethanol. We should be growing corn to feed people not their cars.

I don't see that increasing the production of ethanol is much of a victory, except for the over-sized agribusinesses which are pushing it.
There is a zero energy savings with the current method of production.
By using a food crop to produce ethanol, it is driving up the price of, not only grain, but meat, eggs, milk and dairy products,pet food(yes, read your dry pet food bags), and has already precipitated more economic refugees coming to the US because the price of tortillas, the staple food of the poor, is priced beyond poor families incomes.
They should have added a number of conditions on the ethanol production part of the bill. Oh, that's right K-street didn't want them to.
Yeah, some victory!

The Senate passed a new energy. That's good. Assuming that it passes the house too, what are the odds that we have enough votes to override a presidential veto?

NewDem

We Did It, We Did It, without the Energy Companys
writing any part of it. Our people know how to write Bills. How many years do you think the Republicans have had experience and they still can't write a Bill without the help of Special Interest!

This bill is a joke. It is a meagre attempt by the Dems (and Republicans who voted for it) to claim a victory, however hollow it is.

Why only 35 mpg? And why are they giving the automakers 13 years to accomplish this? And why no cutbacks - at all - on the massive tax subsidies to the oil companies? $6 BILLION a year in tax subsidies for these companies who continue to gouge the American taxpayer?

This is not a victory - this is a sham. I'm neither Dem nor Republican - I'm Independent - so I'm not here to blast them, just here to set the record straight.

They are supposed to take 'nothing' bills and throw them out, go back to square one and work until they get a bill of substance, which this most definitely is not.

Brazil doesn't use corn for ethanol production. They use sugar cane. It doesn't reduce the supply of a staple food, and the stalks, after they are crushed to extract the juice to make the ethanol, are dried and used for the fuel for distillation.
If they were serious about producing ethanol without reducing food supplies here, they'd be looking at some other plant source for alcohol production, and better energy sources for the fuel to distill the product.
Most Prohibition era moonshiners were a heck of a lot more creative about producing ethanol than these over-sized agribusinesses and their over-paid CEOs.

How about we look at ILLEGAL immigration. NO AMNESTY, not now, tomorrow, or ever. We cannot afford to let our jobs in the construction industry, service industry, and technology go to ILLEGAL immigrants. Many of our workers choose not to go to college- it ismorally wrong to allow ILLEGALS to take their opportunities to support their families. ACT NOW. Secure our borders.

How about we look at the ROOT CAUSES of illegal immigration, as well as the reasons that many workers come here under H-2A and H-2b "guest" worker programs to be treated like dirt, in bad working conditions and often cheated on their pay?
These people are economic refugees, who are coming here because NAFTA allowed the big argi-businesses to dump cheap subsidized corn on the Mexican market and forced 1.3 million Mexican farmers off their land, because other "free" trade agreements allowed many of the owners of the maquiladoras to move to find even cheaper and less restrictive job markets, and left their workers with no incomes, because the ethanol programs encourage the major agri-businesses to now sell the corn, that would have been dumped on the Mexican market, for ethanol, and have driven up the price of corn to the point that the poor in Mexico can't afford to buy even the most basic food for their families.
Let's put the blame where it belongs.
On the greed and corruption of this government both Republican and Republi-lites, who have sold out to K-street and its greedy manipulative bosses.
We need to demand that we put an end to the "free" trade agreements which have cost us AND our neighbors so much.
The best way to end the influx of economic refugees is to demand and work toward government policies which will put an end to their need to leave their homes to survive.
In the long run it will not only help them, but ourselves, because it will end the corporations' country hopping in search of less restrictions, and cheaper labor in their total disregard for concerns about the fair treatment of human beings in their sociopathic scrambling for more and more wealth.
Enough is too much. We need to wake up and smell the coffee. We don't need to fall for a divisive issue, yet again, while ignoring the root causes of these problems.

Along with this bill, there needs to be much more public education and awareness in terms of not just alternative fuels and fuel efficient vehicles, but alternative means of transportation. Here in Springfield Missouri, the city did a study on alternative transportation, and the over all attitude seemed much different then what I was used to living in Portland, Oregon. For one, out there, people enjoy riding bikes to work, and the city makes it posssible for people to do so, ie.. bike lanes, and making it legal to ride a bike on the side walk, and making the city buses, bike accesible. In Springfield, its ILLEGAL to ride a bike on a sidewalk, and people look at you to be poor or carless or a studen tto ride a bike, and cars could care less about you as a bike on the road. If oyu ride the bus, you are considered poor, or carless, and in most peoples mind here, it's inconveniant. They dont want to put in a "tram" or Max line. Where as in Portland, the Max is packed in the mornign and afternoon. If the process of using alternative means of transportation was made easier, by people "OPEN " to change, it would help tremendously. We can do that, and we will, it will only make life better for us, and our children.