guest: doug brinkley is great. he is a great scholar. his piece lays it out perfectly. many others have been working on it. let's flesh it out. let the water from the mississippi still go down there. let's do all we can to go down there. people in this town have a lot more courage and common sense and sometimes given credit for. -- than sometimes given credit for. their cost are external to what the consumer pays. in other words, the cost of oil is a little bit more than we really pay for it. it involves the military endeavors to protect oil to the carbon that gets spewed into the atmosphere to the oil spill. so let's put a tax. make it simple. do not get a huge government program. just put a tax on the use of oil. if we do not want to -- we could use it to reduce the federal deficit or rebate it back to citizens. abut let's do something sensible and clear but not get too complicated. let's just say we want to reduce the independendependence on the. hos-- il. host: the president announced the secretary of the navy will look at a plan to restore the gulf. you served on t