Congress Passes Energy Bill despite Opposition from Local Delegation

by David Tamasi

WASHINGTON - - An energy bill that supporters said would generate almost 1 million new jobs and that opponents labeled as a giveaway to special interests skated through the House this week. But it faces a bipartisan effort in the Senate to kill it.

The bill, one of President Bush's top legislative priorities, will cost an estimated $30 billion over 10 years, including $23 billion in tax breaks for oil, natural gas and coal producers. It would require a doubling of ethanol use in gasoline and would, for the first time, establish federal rules for operators of high-voltage electric lines.

Although the House approved the bill by a comfortable margin Tuesday, the measure is opposed in the Senate by an unlikely coalition that includes New Hampshire Republicans Judd Gregg and John Sununu and Massachusetts Democrats Edward M. Kennedy and John Kerry.

Under Senate rules, 60 votes are needed to shut off debate and bring a bill up for a vote. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said he was planning to file a motion Wednesday or Thursday to bring the bill to a vote Friday or Saturday. Supporters of a filibuster said that they were close to obtaining the 41 votes necessary to block a final vote on the measure.

The House passed the 1,400-page bill after one hour of debate, with 46 Democrats joining 200 Republicans to support it. Congressmen Martin Meehan, D-Lowell, and John Tierney, D-Salem, voted against the bill and were sharply critical of its passage.

Meehan called the bill "horrible" and said it was the worst piece of legislation that Congress had passed in the last five years. He said the bill was a "kickback to Republican campaign contributors."

Under the bill, Meehan said the nation would continue to rely too heavily on traditional forms of energy, such as oil and coal. He said the measure doesn't provide a great enough incentive for companies to explore "renewable" types of energy. Roughly two-thirds of the tax incentives in the bill go to oil, coal and natural gas producers, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Tierney said the bill did not "do one good thing for my district or for the country." He chastised Republicans for negotiating the bill behind closed doors.

"From what I have heard, there were plenty of energy company people in the room and no Democrats," he said. "That should raise the eyebrows of everyone across America."

The all-Republican New Hampshire delegation opposed the bill primarily because it contained a liability waiver for producers of MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether), a gasoline additive that has been found to contaminate groundwater. New Hampshire has filed a lawsuit against makers of MTBE, contending that the product contains a carcinogen that has been found in 15 percent of the state's public water supply.

The MTBE waiver was demanded by Congressman Billy Tauzin, R-La., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas. Both of their districts house MTBE producers.

The massive bill had been held up for three years, but the late-summer blackout across the Northeast and parts of the Midwest spurred lawmakers to act. Republican negotiators finally produced an agreement Friday. The final disputes involved ethanol, a gasoline additive produced from corn, and the amount of tax credits for energy producers.

Senator Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, insisted the bill include an increase in the use of ethanol in gasoline, an issue critical to farmers in his state. That put him at loggerheads with his House counterpart, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas, a California Republican. Ultimately, the deal on ethanol was brokered two weeks ago by Vice President Dick Cheney, who pressured legislators by reminding them the energy bill was an important domestic priority for the President.

With the ethanol issue resolved, negotiators then turned to the tax portion of the legislation. Some Republicans, including Sununu, and Democrats said that with the deficit growing, the country could not afford to lose money by giving energy producers additional tax incentives. The bill's tax package was three times what the President had originally proposed.

Republican and Democratic critics charge that negotiators padded the legislation with unnecessary tax incentives that would appeal to lawmakers whose districts are home to the beneficiaries.

The Congressional Budget Office sent a letter Tuesday to Tauzin that said enactment of the bill "would reduce revenues by $17.4 billion over the 2004-2008 period and by $25.7 billion over the 2004-2013 period."

Tierney said support for the bill was along geographic, not partisan lines. In fact, several Democratic Senators from the Midwest - the prime source of the nation's corn supply -- support the bill, and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, who could face a tough reelection contest next year, had still not taken sides Wednesday.