...Of the 12 million barrels of oil we import daily, the 6 million barrels we get from OPEC members are the most geopolitically dubious. That oil from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is refined into about 83 million gallons, or roughly one-fifth of our daily gas consumption of 390 million gallons, according to the Energy Information Administration.

The 2010 Toyota Prius is EPA-rated at 50 miles per gallon, combined city and highway driving -- a number that's really useful only for comparison's sake, as some drivers will get less and some will get more. Members of the press at an event I attended notched more than 70 mpg without too much trouble.


Now then, the U.S. Department of Energy budgetary request for fiscal 2010 is $65 billion, including nearly $40 billion from the National Economic Recovery Act. The 2010 Toyota Prius will probably come in at around $23,000 when prices are announced later this spring. Since we've got the federal checkbook open, what if we took $46 billion and bought Priuses? Would that help?

Why yes, yes it would.

By my calculations, $46 billion would buy about 2 million Priuses. Assuming we use them to replace cars that get 15 mpg and assuming an average driving year of 15,000 miles -- and assuming the junkers are retired out of the fleet -- these 2 million Priuses would save about 700 gallons of gas per car, or 1.4 billion gallons a year.

That's about 17 days worth of OPEC oil. Doesn't sound like much, does it? But what if we were to continue allocating $46 billion annually to the U.S. Department of Prius? In 10 years, we would be saving 14 billion gallons a year, or 170 days' worth of OPEC oil. That will give Hugo Chavez insomnia like a case of Red Bull.