43
Obama to focus on energy in Fitch talk
The candidate says his energy plan will transform the economy.
AUSTINTOWN — U.S. Sen. Barack Obama will outline his energy proposal, which includes eliminating the need for oil from the Middle East and Venezuela in a decade, during a town hall-style meeting today at Austintown Fitch High School.
The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee began his “New Energy for America” tour Monday in Lansing, Mich., and brings it to the Mahoning Valley today.
About 2,000 people are expected to attend the meeting in the school’s gymnasium.
It’s Obama’s first return to the heavily Democratic Mahoning Valley since he was soundly defeated in the March 4 Democratic primary by U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.
Gov. Ted Strickland and U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown will travel with Obama to Austintown and to a later stop in Berea, and will speak at both events. The campaign also called Youngstown Mayor Jay Williams, an early Obama supporter, on Monday asking that he attend the Austintown meeting, a request he’s honoring.
Obama’s and Strickland’s birthdays were Monday with volunteers throughout Ohio holding parties and calling about 47,000 voters urging them to support the Democratic presidential candidate.
In his Monday speech in Lansing, Obama, of Illinois, outlined an energy plan that includes short-term and long-term solutions.
“Breaking our oil addiction is one of the greatest challenges our generation will ever face,” Obama said Monday. “It will take nothing less than a complete transformation of our economy.”
Among his short-term proposals are a $1,000 energy rebate for working families as well as selling oil from the federal strategic petroleum stockpile and a limited amount of new off-shore drilling as part of a comprehensive plan. The latter two are reversals from previous positions.
Long-term, Obama wants to invest $150 billion to build a new energy economy that would create 5 million jobs and eliminate the need for oil from the Middle East and Venezuela in 10 years.
“This will not be easy and it will not happen overnight,” Obama said in Lansing. “But I know we can do this.”
Obama acknowledges his goals are ambitious.
“I will not pretend we can achieve them without cost or without sacrifice or without the contribution of almost every American citizen,” he said. “But I will say that these goals are possible.”
In a Monday teleconference call, Doug Holtz-Eakin, U.S. Sen. John McCain’s senior policy adviser, called Obama’s plan “utterly unrealistic. ... He either doesn’t understand what he said or he’s not being straight with the American people.”
Holtz-Eakin said McCain’s energy policy puts “everything into the plan.” That means comprehensive oil and gas domestic drilling including on the Outer Continental Shelf, a reversal of McCain’s previous position; as well as nuclear power expansion and clean coal production.
McCain’s goal is to have the United States no longer dependent on foreign oil by 2025.
Obama criticized McCain’s energy plan, saying the Republican created one that focuses almost primarily on off-shore drilling and was proposed after years of inaction and in the face of public frustration over gas prices.
Before today, Obama’s only public rally in the Mahoning Valley was Feb. 18 at Youngstown State University. Obama’s campaign said the candidate will return to the Valley.
McCain, of Arizona, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, held his only public event April 22 at YSU. McCain also held a private meeting June 27 with some workers at the Lordstown General Motors complex.
and later attended a private fundraiser in Howland.
skolnick@vindy.com