Leadership Quote by Jim Costa

Policy talk dressed up as national security is the tell here. Jim Costa isn’t selling ethanol or CAFE standards as technocratic tweaks; he’s framing them as protective gear in a dangerous world. The key move is the conditional: “if we are to make our country safer.” It yokes a grab bag of domestic energy policies to an existential payoff, inviting listeners to treat miles-per-gallon rules and farm-fuel subsidies like counterterrorism tools. That’s not accidental. It’s how you build a coalition across constituencies that don’t naturally share priorities: environmentalists get “conservation,” Midwestern and Central Valley agriculture get “ethanol industry,” and moderates can endorse “CAFE standards” without having to say “climate.”

The subtext is political triangulation. “Other steps” signals a broader energy agenda without naming whatever the current fight is (drilling, war, gas prices). It implies that current policy is insufficient and that prudence requires a diversified portfolio. The phrase “foreign oil” does a lot of emotional work: it collapses a complex global market into a simple dependency narrative, with “reliance” sounding like weakness and “cutting” sounding like discipline.

Context matters because this rhetoric thrives when fuel prices spike or geopolitical tensions rise. In those moments, energy independence becomes a patriotic shorthand, and efficiency standards become a rare kind of regulation that can be marketed as self-defense. Costa’s line is engineered to make the future feel governable: not a revolution, just “steps” that add up to safety.