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Thursday, December 13, 2007

Editorial: Energy Bill Fell Victim to Politics

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    If smart politics is "the art of the possible," the 1,055-page energy bill that came lumbering out of the U.S. House of Representatives last week was impossibly dim-witted. House Democrats knew before the vote that the bill stood no chance of passage in the Senate, much less evading a veto.
    Both of New Mexico's senators were shaking their heads when they learned details of the bill early in the week. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had poisoned it, they said, by adding two controversial provisions.
    One, crafted by Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M., would mandate that electric utilities generate at least 15 percent of their power from renewable sources such as wind and solar by 2020. That might be feasible in New Mexico, but it's a serious problem for some states. The other red-flag provision would convert $13.5 billion in tax breaks for large oil companies to tax incentives for energy efficiency in homes and businesses.
    Both are worthy of debate— and will be debated in the future. There are arguments for and against. But they won't come to pass this time around.
    Sens. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., had expected Pelosi, a Democrat, to push out a House energy bill similar to the one that passed the Senate in June.
    "We had a deal" with Pelosi to leave the two provisions out, Domenici said.
    Bingaman, chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, favors the renewable energy mandate as well as some of the tax provisions. But he still expressed frustration that Pelosi had added them to the House bill, dooming it in the Senate.
    "There was an understanding," Bingaman said, that the important new fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks would not be jeopardized by the utility mandates and tax provisions.
    Boosting fuel economy by 40 percent, to an average of 35 miles per gallon by 2020, has bipartisan support in both the House and Senate. Majorities also support an increased use of ethanol as a motor fuel, with limits on the amount that can be produced from corn, as well as a shift to energy-efficient appliances and a phase-out of the incandescent light bulb invented by Thomas Edison.
    The House bill was indeed dead on arrival in the Senate, where it fell seven votes short of the 60 necessary to avoid a Republican filibuster on Friday. The Senate is now expected to write a new version of the bill, stripping out the utility mandates and oil company tax provisions. Restoring it, in other words, to the bill Domenici and Bingaman expected in the first place.
    What end was served by the House Democrats' change-up on the energy bill? Vital time was wasted, with Congress nearing its year-end recess, but perhaps the leadership was looking further ahead on the calendar— to the 2008 campaign season.
    Udall, who was recruited by Democratic congressional leaders to run for the Senate seat being vacated by Domenici in 2008, could emerge from this gambit as a hero to New Mexico environmentalists— even if something of a Don Quixote hero, tilting at windmills and solar panels.
    Udall's Republican opponents for Domenici's Senate seat include Reps. Heather Wilson and Steve Pearce, who both voted against the House bill. Pearce objected to the utility mandates and oil corporation taxes. Wilson objected to the taxes.
    If this week's House energy bill was nothing more than political grandstanding, the strategy was shameful and needs to stop when the Senate's energy bill goes to conference with House leaders.
    The nation needs a workable plan to move it away from costly and dangerous dependence on foreign oil. That goal is too important to sabotage for anyone's political gain.