Bush Hits The Road To Plug Gas Plan

President Bush hit the road Wednesday morning to promote the new energy initiative he outlined to Congress and the nation in his State of the Union address.

On a quick trip to Delaware, Mr. Bush warned that the nation's reliance on oil poses a national security threat. The United States must come to rely on its own sources of fuels, not the oil-rich lands of those who pose dangers to the nation, he said.

"You don't want your president sitting in the Oval Office worried about the activities of a hostile regime that can have all kinds of impacts on our security, starting with economic security," Mr. Bush told employees of DuPont, one of the largest researchers of alternative fuels.

In another of Washington's many political ironies, Mr. Bush was visiting the home town of Sen. Joe Biden even as the Delaware Democrat and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was pushing forward a resolution disapproving the president's war buildup in Iraq.

A growing number of senators from Mr. Bush's own party also expressed doubts that his Iraq strategy will work.

In his talk here, Mr. Bush said that a too-heavy dependence on oil "means that if a terrorist were able to destroy infrastructure somewhere else in the world, it's going to affect what you pay at the gasoline pump."

His comments came as the White House tried to keep some attention on Mr. Bush's domestic agenda, which has been overshadowed by the debate over Iraq.

Mr. Bush wants to cast a spotlight on his "20-in-10" energy plan, which calls for a 20 percent in the U.S. consumption of gasoline over ten years, CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller reports.

Toward that end, the president signed an executive order earlier Wednesday to cut down on the federal government's use of gasoline and increase its use of alternative fuels.

But Tom Kloza, an analyst for the Oil Price Information Service, said it's going to be "very, very difficult" to reach the president's goal of reducing gasoline use by 20 percent by 2017.

"I think we can cut our usage significantly. We cut our usage about 3 percent or 4 percent after Hurricane Katrina because of demand," Kloza told CBS News The Early Show. "But 20 percent over 10 years is going to be tough with population growth and with a strong economy. It may take a recession to cut demand by those amounts. That's not a solution anyone wants to see.

In Delaware, Mr. Bush toured the DuPont Experimental Station to tout to its research on cellulosic ethanol — one of the main fuels that Mr. Bush touts as an alternative to oil.

He took a hands-on approach as scientists walked him through the process of converting raw materials to fermentable sugars to fuel. Mr. Bush picked up bottles of milled corn stover, poked his fingers into a beaker of wood chips and picked up a handful of switchgrass.

"What our citizens got to know is that because of the research you're doing here — with some of their taxpayers' money to help you – that switchgrass .... could end up being the fuel that powers their automobiles," Mr. Bush said in the DuPont greenhouse. "That's important."

DuPont is leading a science-based consortium that is researching how to break down entire corn plants — including the stalk and leaves — into biofuels, such as cellulosic ethanol.

In his comments to DuPont workers, Mr. Bush said the day is coming when people will commonly be able to use plug-in batteries for their cars. The United States is spending public money on such research.

"You're going to be able to drive the first 20 miles on electricity — and your car is not going to have to look like a golf cart," Mr. Bush said.

Mr. Bush has rejected requiring automakers to boost the fuel economy of their new car fleets, and he continues to oppose mandatory reductions of so-called "greenhouse" gases.