Obama's $2 billion plan to wean US off foreign oil (+video)

All these factors are already having an effect, Obama said Friday in Illinois. “You walk into any dealership today, and you'll see twice as many hybrids to choose from as there were five years ago. You'll see seven times as many cars that can go 40 miles a gallon or more.”

The goal of the trust fund is to push forward.

Initially, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said such a fund was “an idea I may agree with," but a spokesman has since pulled back, saying the revenues might constitute a tax increase.

Oil and gas producers expressed the hope that the new plan would speed up federal permitting. “IPAA welcomes the president’s new commitment to investing in a more efficient energy project permitting process on federal lands,” said Independent Petroleum Association of America President Barry Russell in a statement.

Some environmentalists decried the president’s overall energy strategy as a façade for increased oil and gas development.

"President Obama’s proposal promises to save the United States from its dependence on oil by deepening our dependence on oil,” said Daniel Gatti, director of Environment America’s Get Off Oil program. “Today’s plan fails to directly confront the key question on oil and transportation policy: Are we building a future in which we drill for use more oil, or are we building a future in which we use less?

Still, on Capitol Hill, one bipartisan group of legislators swung behind the president.

“The president clearly gets it,” said Kateri Callahan, president of the Alliance to Save Energy, a nonprofit, bipartisan energy-efficiency group that boasts a board of Republican and Democratic lawmakers.“The good news is that Republicans get it too. Every day we don’t advance public policies to drive energy productivity is a day we waste energy and we waste money. Congress should join with the president today in the race to a more energy-efficient America."

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