The major corporate sponsors of the Republican Party are largely on record as being opposed to CAFE standards, and maintain they don't contribute to fuel efficiency because the higher prices attendant to meeting CAFE standards cause people to hold onto gas-guzzlers longer. Right, everyone buys SUVs because they're so inexpensive. So this statement is a bit of misdirection to placate the less wary of the CAFE supporters. We're not left with a clear notion of where the administration stands on the matter of CAFE standards, but Mr. Cheney can't help but keep blurting out the truth when he departs from his prepared script, as in the time when he said conservation was merely a personal virtue and not a public one. This is a red herring, that little bit of handwaving that's intended to catch your eye while the other hand is doing it's little bit of magic.
CAFE standards are worlds away from a command economy.
A command economy would be where the federal government told the members of the auto industry how many cars to build of each model, mandated all the features and performance, divided up the market share among the manufacturers and tried to run industry more efficiently than the marketplace would. CAFE standards don't do anything approaching that. They mandate a target that the industry must meet, to achieve a greater social good, and allow the marketplace to determine how that target is achieved. Setting standards is a legitimate role for the federal government. Here is where the free marketers and I part company.