U.S. Senator Tom Harkin is supportive of alternative fuels and would like to push for mandated flexible fuel vehicle production. He asks, “Why do we run cars on gasoline?”

According to the Iowa Independent, the Senator said he plans to introduce legislation that would require all vehicles produced in the U.S. run as flexible fuel.

Brazil has made flex-fuel cars a key part of its energy strategy, Harkin noted. “We could do the same thing here in two years,” Harkin said. “In two years we could mandate that every car sold in America be flex fuel. That would do more in two years to bring down the price of gasoline than any other single thing we could do.”

Harkin said more oil drilling is not a long-term answer — and he thinks most Americans understand this. He noted that President Bush centered a State of the Union speech around the nation’s addiction to oil and its need to break it.

“If you’re addicted to oil it would seem to me the last thing you’d want to do is go out and start drilling for more oil,” Harkin said. “That’s just feeding your addiction.”