Congratulations
Sunday, November 23, 2003; Page B06
IT'S RARE THESE DAYS to have an opportunity to congratulate the Senate, but we have one. On Friday morning, the Senate failed to muster the 60 votes needed to end a Democratic filibuster and pass the pork-packed energy bill. While the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, has vowed to hold another vote on the bill in the next few days, he doesn't have an easy task. Not only does he need to persuade at least three senators to switch sides, he must do so in the days before Thanksgiving, when they'd surely rather be elsewhere.
He's made a start, of course, with the 13 Democrats who did allow themselves to be bought off and supported this legislation. Most, including Thomas A. Daschle (S.D.), the Senate minority leader, are from corn states that stand to benefit from the bill's egregious ethanol provisions. The two Louisiana senators, John Breaux and Mary Landrieu, also would have been made aware of just how many goodies for the state of Louisiana and its oil and gas industry were stuffed into the bill by Rep. W.J. "Billy" Tauzin (R-La.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
But to their immense credit, six Republican senators broke ranks with their leadership despite enormous political pressure to support a bill that oozed money, projects and favors for every state in the nation. Leading the pack was Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who was inspired by his longstanding opposition to government pork to describe the legislation as a "Hooters and Polluters" bill, an allusion to the bill's rollback of environmental law and to a provision that appears to benefit a Louisiana shopping mall that will contain a Hooters restaurant. The two senators from Maine, Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe, also voted against it, on environmental grounds, as did Lincoln D. Chafee (R.I.). The two New Hampshire senators, Judd Gregg and John E. Sununu, joined them, in part because the law was deliberately designed to cut short a New Hampshire lawsuit against the producers of MTBE, a gasoline additive thought to poison drinking water, and in part out of honorable fiscal conservatism. We hope all of them have the nerve to stand up to whatever bribes and threats come their way in the next few days.
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