May 6th Republican 16th district Congressman Don Manzullo outline his energy policy recently.
I was wondering when Manzullo’s Democratic Party opponent would fire his salvo. It looks as if he has twelve of them.
Here’s the first:
ROCKFORD – Bob Abboud, 16th District Congressional candidate and energy policy expert, hammered incumbent Rep. Don Manzullo Tuesday for proposing an energy plan ‘full of empty promises and bad policies’. Abboud said the first point on Manzullo’s plan would do nothing to significantly reduce the cost of gasoline and would only roll back environmental progress that has given Northern Illinois some of the cleanest air in the country.
“Don Manzullo has done nothing as gas prices have swelled by almost three dollars a gallon since he took office,” Abboud said. “His inability to address this issue before it spiraled into today’s crisis is a complete failure of leadership. We can’t afford to follow Mr. Manzullo down the dangerous path he has set us on or allow his do-nothing politics to set us back another 15 years.”
Abboud said Manzullo’s suggestion to eliminate federal mandates for the use of “boutique” or reformulated fuels could seriously compromise Illinois’ air quality and wouldn’t be worth the insignificant savings drivers would experience.
“Instead of solving a problem he is just creating another one,” Abboud said. “This proposal won’t save money, but it will dramatically effect the quality of our air in Northern Illinois.”
The Environmental Protection Agency employs these mandates during Summer months because it significantly reduces the creation of smog. In the summer conditions for creating smog and pollution are much more hazardous, essentially creating more pollution than any other time during the year. Manzullo believes that because Illinois residents already utilize some flex-fuel vehicles, cars equipped to use cleaner fuels, the pollution would be off-set. However Abboud said Manzullo’s math just doesn’t add up.
“Flex-fuel vehicles don’t even make-up 1 percent of the total number of cars on the road today,” Abboud said.
“The other 99 percent of cars can’t use E-85 or other alternative fuels. If we don’t continue to use reformulated or ‘boutique’ fuels during the summer we risk doing great harm to our environment.”
Abboud said Manzullo’s proposal is an ‘election year’ proposal, designed to distract people from remembering that this gas crisis could have been avoided. Calling all 12 points of Manzullo’s energy plan into question, Abboud vowed to take the next 12 days to shine a light on how damaging the plan’s implementation would be.
“Manzullo and Congress are asleep at the switch,” Abboud said. “Don Manzullo’s willingness to ignore, or inability to address this challenge before it became a crisis is reprehensible. The American people deserve the truth; they deserve real solutions to serious problems, not these cheap parlor trick proposals.”
Abboud’s energy plan would utilize revenue generated by the federal gas tax to provide significant tax breaks for the development of affordable and widely available hybrid technology by American car makers. In addition Abboud will create the American Power Authority, a public-private partnership designed to build 100 new nuclear power plants that will provide clean and renewable electric power to support these new hybrid vehicles. A plan Chuck Sweeney of the Rockford Register Star called ‘nothing short of revolutionary’.
For more information on Bob Abboud and his plan to protect the environment, reduce the cost of gasoline and put America on a path toward real energy independence please visit www.robertabboud.com.