McCAIN: TIME RUNNING OUT FOR ENERGY SUPPORTERS

by Jordan Carleo-Evangelist

WASHINGTON - Buried deep down in a multibillion-dollar bill to overhaul the nation's energy program is a provision that would primarily benefit one company: Home Depot.

It is because of pork such as that tax break on imported ceiling fans that the entire $95 billion energy bill should be killed, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said Thursday.

"Forty-eight million dollars for a two-year suspension of tariffs on ceiling fans -- what's that all about?" McCain asked incredulously.

McCain said the longer the Senate debates the energy bill, and the more Home Depot-style tax breaks that emerge, the harder it will be for supporters to defend it.

The bill's opponents have charged that it is loaded with pet projects meant to buy votes. Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., denounced the bill on the floor for the second consecutive day Thursday, saying it was a "hodgepodge of little interests" that picks winners and losers in different regions of the country based on whether their senators' votes are needed to pass the bill.

Republican leaders have tried to get a quick vote on the bill, McCain said, "because the more of the specifics of this colossus are known, the more people are going to be against it."

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., filed a motion late Wednesday to try to bring the bill to the floor for a vote Friday afternoon. But the bill faces so much opposition that it was unclear whether Frist would be able to garner enough support to end debate and force a vote.

McCain, Gregg and Sen. John Sununu of New Hampshire are three of the six Republicans to defect from the Bush administration and forcefully oppose the bill. They argue that the $25 billion in tax breaks for energy industries and roughly $70 billion in other spending are wasteful and fiscally irresponsible.

"It's hard to believe that the administration could endorse a bill that exceeds their level of spending by such a significant number," said Gregg, pointing out that the bill has three times the dollar amount of tax breaks that President Bush initially asked for.

Sununu said the bill surpasses spending limits the Senate adopted six months ago by $800 million in fiscal 2004 and $3.5 billion over the next five years. He also said it unfairly props up some industries, favoring untested technologies like hydrogen-powered cars, which he called a "grandiose pipe dream."

"Why should any legislator, or any bureaucrat, for that matter, be trying to pick the winning or losing energy technology five to 10 years into the future?" asked Sununu, an engineer.

McCain has sarcastically called the legislation "the No Lobbyist Left Behind Act," a play on the education-related No Child Left Behind Act, and the "Hooters and Polluters bill." One provision would give $2 billion in bond incentives to shopping centers in four states that use energy-efficient technology. One of the malls, in Shreveport, La., would contain a Hooters restaurant, part of the chain known for its buxom waitresses.

"Usually when I look at an appropriations bill I see several hundred thousand, maybe in some cases a couple of million" in pork spending, but "these are in the billions," McCain told reporters.

In two days of debate on the floor, the bill's backers, including Budget Committee chairman Don Nickles, R-Okla., have repeatedly conceded it may not be perfect, but that it is needed to decrease America's reliance on foreign oil. An imperfect bill is better than none at all, said its chief author, Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. And if the bill is killed, Domenici has warned, no comprehensive energy legislation will come about in the near future.

But Gregg and the five other Republicans who have split from their party's leadership argue the bill just goes too far.

Gregg told the Senate Thursday that "one of the most outrageous" provisions would give $2 billion to oil companies in Texas and Louisiana to phase out the use of the gasoline additive MtBE.

Meanwhile, the bill would shield those producers from lawsuits that would force them to pay to clean the chemical from public water supplies. New Hampshire, with 15 percent of its wells contaminated by MtBE, is the only state to sue so far. Its suit would be killed if the bill passed.

Government waste watchdogs speculated late Thursday they were within one or two votes of the 41 needed to sustain a filibuster and prevent the bill from coming to a vote on the Senate floor. But McCain, who said he wasn't sure what the current count was but that "it's close," cautioned that the opposition would need more than a one- or two-vote cushion to be confident it could filibuster the bill.

When the margin is slim, the forces doling out such large prizes usually win out because senators are eager to bring money home to their states, he said. Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., who could face a tough reelection next year, has decided to support the bill because his state stands to gain from a $5.9 billion subsidy for ethanol, a corn-based gasoline additive.

"They'll bring all pressure to bear on one or two people," McCain said. The White House, Republican leaders and a number of powerful interest groups have made passage of this bill a high priority.

If GOP leaders manage to overcome a filibuster and get a final vote on the bill, its opponents would most likely not have the votes to sink it.

"It's very apparent what the process here was," said McCain. "'We need somebody's vote; well, what do they need?'"