[Begala:] Welcome back to CROSSFIRE. We are coming to you live from the George Washington University in snowy Washington, D.C. Our area is expecting 5 to 10 inches of snow tonight. It will give SUV owners another five to 10 reasons apparently to love their big rigs. Has the winter of 2003 put a dent in efforts to drive SUVs off the road? In New York to debate the topic, Robert Kennedy, Jr. He's senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Here in our Washington studio, Sam Kazman, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
[Carlson:] Mr. Kennedy, thanks for joining us. As Paul said, it's snowing right now in Washington. A lot of people are driving their SUVs to work, to their children's school, to the hospital in some cases. They are not driving solar-powered or bio mass-powered hybrids. Why should they feel guilty about driving SUVs?
[Robert Kennedy, Jr., Senior Attorney, Natural Resources Defense Council:] Well, I don't think people should feel guilty about driving an SUV, unless they want to drive a safe car. Because the SUV today is now the most dangerous car on the road. But people who want SUVs ought to be able to have SUVs, but Detroit ought to be giving us SUVs that get 40 miles per gallon. Our economy is in the tank today, and one of the reasons it's in the tank is because of what we're putting in the tank. And instead of encouraging Detroit to take steps to end or mitigate our deadly addiction to Mid Eastern oil, this administration is instead encouraging Americans to use more and more gasoline, giving giant tax breaks to individuals who buy the largest, biggest gas-guzzling SUVs. And it's bad, ultimately, for our country. But it's not something that we should address to the individual SUV buyers. It's something that Detroit is fighting to stop gas fuel efficiency standards from being imposed on SUVs, and that's really bad for America.
[Begala:] In fact, Mr. Kazman, doesn't Mr. Kennedy have a good point? Detroit, for one of the most successful sectors of our economy, the biggest whiners. They whined they couldn't do seat belts, they couldn't do safety glass, they couldn't do air bags, they couldn't do 20 or 25 miles per gallon. Why don't we have a government that says to them just the way President Kennedy said we'll put a man on the moon that you're going to have a 50 mile per gallon SUV?
[Sam Kazman, Competitive Enterprise Institute:] Because, first of all, it's become clear that when the government tries to set fuel economy standards it doesn't end up affecting fuel consumption very much, but it does end up killing people. The government's fuel economy program, which is nicknamed CAFE, has been on the books for more than a quarter of a century. It's main impact has been to kill people by forcing cars to be made downsized, to be made smaller and lighter, which means, yes, they get more miles per gallon, but it also means they're less crash worthy. This is a claim that we brought more than a decade ago in a series of court cases. And I think we are fully validated with the National Academy of Sciences report that came out in the summer of 2001 that found that CAFE, in fact, does kill people, and it kills on the order of about 2,000 people a year. And yet Mr. Kennedy's organization is trying to make CAFE even more stringent and even more deadly, and he's not saying anything about this risk.
[Carlson:] Now what about that, Mr. Kennedy? I mean, there have been a number of studies on this. One done by Harvard and another done by an environmental group, that say, when you make cars lighter, they become flimsier and thousands of people die. The Clinton administration found that. What do you say to the families of those people who are killed
[Kennedy:] Well, first of all, that's not true. The data that Mr. Kazman is citing Mr. Kazman is an industry spokesman and it is phony tobacco data. The National Highway Transportation Safety Association last week announced that, by its own data, the federal government's own data National Academy of Sciences confirms this that by the federal government and the National Academy's data, the most dangerous cars on the road are SUVs. You are eight percent here's the only statistic you need to know, because Mr. Kazman is an expert at massaging statistics. Here's the only one you need to know. You are eight percent more likely to die if you're an SUV than in any other class of cars. And you are three times more likely to kill another person. And if you're another person, you are three times more likely to die from an
[Suv. Kazman:] Wait a second. First of all, when you're talking crash data, this is summarized. What I'm stating is not being drawn out of any specific table. It is in the executive summary of the National Academy of Sciences. It's...
[Kennedy:] Which has been discredited and disavowed?
[Kazman:] Oh, discredited by whom? By calling tobacco science...
[Kennedy:] And by the National Highway Transportation Safety Association.
[Kazman:] Excuse me. The National Highway Transportation Safety Association...
[Kennedy:] Jeffrey Rung, who was President Bush's appointee...
[Begala:] Mr. Kennedy, hang on a second. Let's let Mr. Kazman go.
[Kennedy:] OK.
[Kazman:] First of all, the NAS study is out on there on the Web. It has not been discredited. It had a dissent to it, but so what? Many studies have dissent. It's essential finding and this is finding No. 2 is that CAFE has some very real, but hidden costs. And the fact that it kills people is one of those costs. And the fact that we never hear this mentioned in this debate by people who want to make this program even more stringent make this an incredibly dishonest debate. Now as far as NHTSA goes...
[Begala:] Why would the government intentionally kill its owners?
[Kazman:] Because if you're running if you're middle if your agency is called National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and your middle name is safety, it's a little difficult to admit that one of your programs actually kills people. But that's right. This was the conclusion that was illogical, but it was politics. And in the court case we brought, a federal appellate panel found and I'm quoting from a court decision that NHTSA was concealing the size safety issue through statistical slight of hand and bureaucratic mumbo jumbo.
[Carlson:] Now, Mr. Kennedy, quickly...
[Kennedy:] What Mr. Kazman is not telling you is that his court case was effectively overruled by a subsequent court case, and that this data was contested in the beginning and it has subsequent been completely, completely discredited, utterly discredited. And I can explain that if you let me.
[Carlson:] Mr. Kennedy, I know you can. But I want to back up a second and just sort of provide an overview here. You are focused on SUVs as a petroleum-wasting product, but it strikes me that there are a lot of other things that waste oil, like big houses, like limousines, like private jets. Will you pledge tonight never to take a limousine or a private jet again and do your part to keep America safe?
[Kennedy:] You know that can I answer this?
[Carlson:] Please.
[Kennedy:] That demonstrates the weakness of these arguments that you're trying to turn this around on me. I'm not saying to people that you shouldn't drive SUVs. What we should all be saying is, if we want our SUVs, we want Detroit to build SUVs that can get 40 miles per gallon, and they can do that. The technology is out there. The Avery Levins Omni car, which is an SUV the size of a Lincoln Navigator, gets 100 miles per gallon. We can do this. Detroit just doesn't want to do it, and we have an administration now that, instead of trying to restrict gas- guzzlers, like Franklin Roosevelt did during World War II, it is actually giving tax breaks. Whereas today, under President Bush's new tax plan, if you buy $100,000 Hummer, which gets 13 miles per gallon, you can get an $87,000 tax break. It's only available to the richest Americans who buy the biggest gas-guzzling cars.
[Begala:] You're going to get a chance to respond after we take this break. In a minute, when we come back, I'm going to tell you what the Bush administration, not Clinton, but Bush says about the dangers of SUVs. You may be surprised. Later, our "Quote of the Day" is from a former oil man and a dedicated user of duct tape. You're watching CROSSFIRE on CNN, the most trusted name in news.