Gore to Detail Environment, Energy Plans

Preparing to unveil the final portion of his “progress and prosperity” campaign theme, Vice President Al Gore on Tuesday will announce a multibillion-dollar energy and environment proposal billed as the biggest investment of its kind in American history.

The plan represents the third policy area toward which Gore hopes to direct the nation’s budget surplus. Gore spokesman Chris Lehane said Sunday that the proposal focuses on five goals, including a long-term reduction of the “big-oil stranglehold on America” and investments in new technologies that will save energy, reduce pollution and create jobs.

Although Gore is set to deliver the framework of the proposal Tuesday to supporters in Philadelphia, details are expected to emerge in the coming week as the vice president completes a three-day swing through Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York.

Gore “wants desperately” to reduce the country’s dependence on unreliable sources of imported oil and will offer ways to develop clean, affordable and reliable energy from domestic sources, Lehane said. The plan also calls for “sizable” tax incentives to help people purchase energy-efficient cars, trucks, SUVs and homes, Gore officials said.

The proposal will touch on ways to protect children and the elderly from the threat of pollution, as well as address the growing threat of global warming, Gore officials said. The vice president is in favor of diversifying the country’s sources of energy, increasing the reliability of the power grid and investing in other transportation sources such as light rail, high-speed rail and cleaner buses.

Since launching his “progress and prosperity” tour two weeks ago, Gore has focused on plans for improving education, health care and, now, the environment. He has proposed funding changes for Medicare and the establishment of a health care trust fund that would be funded by the federal budget surplus. One element calls for adding a prescription drug benefit for seniors on Medicare by 2002.

Gore has also said he would use the country’s prosperity to preserve Medicare and Social Security, pay down the national debt and give tax cuts to middle-class families.

“Don’t privatize Social Security, for goodness sake,” Gore told supporters in Miami on Saturday. “Social Security must be saved.” He said he would propose a program called “Social Security plus” that would create tax-free voluntary accounts to let people save and invest independently.

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee left California for balmy Miami over the weekend, breezing through speeches and dinners in apparently high spirits, despite being dogged last week by renewed calls for a special counsel to investigate his role in 1996 presidential campaign fund-raising.

At a private residence in an upscale enclave of Miami Beach on Saturday, Gore stood in a lavishly decorated family room overlooking Biscayne Bay and repeated snippets of his “progress and prosperity” message to a circle of 30 supporters, including Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and Senate hopeful Bill Nelson, Florida’s insurance commissioner.

“I want to ask you to do something that is very difficult, and that is to allow yourselves to believe without reservation that we can do what is right in America,” said Gore, wearing a black suit and his trademark cowboy boots. “If you can allow yourselves to believe in the best of America, that is exactly what we will create.”

Phil Levine, the 38-year-old entrepreneur who hosted the $5,000-per-couple dinner, said he is an example of how Americans can benefit from the country’s economic strength. Levine once worked as a cruise ship guide for guests, narrating tours and detailing the various ports of call, until he launched his own company, On Board Media, to do the same thing.

Gore raised nearly $4 million for the Democratic Party in the last three days, including about $500,000 at Florida’s biggest state Democratic Party fund-raising dinner of the year, party officials said.