Former presidential candidate Gary Bauer on Tuesday following President Obama's address to the nation, said that "Obama is tilting at the proverbial windmill with his energy policy, pretending that the United States can just decide to use hot-air power and ignoring the energy needs of our nation."

Bauer, chairman of Campaign for Working Families, made the following statement:

"The United States will be dependent on carbon-based fuels during the lifetime of all who might have been listening to Barack Obama this evening. The president's hostility to the energy sources that power this great nation, from coal to natural gas, from nuclear to petroleum, seems poorly informed. To pretend that wind or solar energy can replace oil is to ignore the millions of dollars and many years of research that have proven that these two sources of energy are likely to provide an insignificant percentage of our overall energy needs for decades to come. It is disingenuous to assert otherwise.

"The irony of the BP oil leak in the Gulf is that we are drilling three-miles under the surface because Obama's most ardent 'green' supporters have made it illegal for the U.S. to drill where it makes the most sense - putting increasing amounts of land and shallow water off limits to exploration.

"Obama's executive inexperience has been on full display over the past 56 days. His energy policies led to drilling in a dangerous location, and his sluggish response to the accident led to a massive disaster zone. But his answer is to further hamstring proven energy sources, like nuclear, and to shut down energy exploration on land and closer to shore. Now he wants to add job-killing taxes at a time of near double digit unemployment. Obama has been a man-caused disaster in the Gulf."

Source: Campaign for Working Families