Chu's wife not 'walking the walk that he talks'

Chris Woodward   (OneNewsNow.com) Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Energy Secretary Steven Chu may not own a car, but an investigation has found that his wife does -- and its gas mileage is nowhere near that of a Chevy Volt.

The Daily Caller has obtained motor vehicle registration records that show Jean Chu is the owner of a 2002 BMW 325i, complete with a six-cylinder engine that requires premium gasoline. Executive editor David Martosko calls that "odd."

"When it was new, [it] got an average of about 21 miles to the gallon. That's not horrible, but Steven Chu's own Energy Department says that during that model year, the average in America was 29 miles per gallon," Martosko reports. "So it's a little odd to see the spouse of the nation's biggest gas hawk telling us all to drive more fuel-efficient vehicles. Certainly, his wife is not walking the walk that he talks." Secretary Chu recently told the House Subcommittee on Energy and Power that he does not own a car. That information came just weeks after Chu was asked by another subcommittee if the Obama administration's overall goal was to reduce the price of gas. Chu said no; the overall goal is to decrease the nation's dependency on oil. "He gets chauffeured back and forth to work like every cabinet secretary. He doesn't need to own a car," The Daily Caller executive editor offers. "It certainly, I think, indicates that he was trying to be a little bit misleading. If somebody asked me, 'What kind of car do you have?' I would say, 'I've got a Volkswagen; my wife's got a Chevy.' He basically ignored what his wife drives when he was asked that question in a congressional hearing."

In September 2008, Chu -- who was then director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory -- told The Wall Street Journal that "we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe."