Just to shock and amaze everyone I will post something from a conservative source, the WSJ editorial page. They don't like the energy bill much either.
Capitol Hill Blowout
July 29, 2005; Page A12
President Bush had to twist a lot of arms to squeak his Central American Free Trade Agreement through Congress this week (see below), but Republicans are about to make sure he pays for a whole lot more than their chiropractor bills. Having sacrificed to support free trade, the Members prepared for the August recess by throwing themselves a giant spending party.
Speaker Dennis Hastert had barely waited for dawn to break after the midnight Cafta vote before he directed the House to pass a $286.4 billion highway bill. He expects Mr. Bush to sign this because it is "only" $2.4 billion more than the President's 2005 veto limit, which is "only" $28 billion more than his 2004 veto limit of $256 billion, which was "only" a 17% increase over the previous six-year highway spending level. "Only" in Washington could spending so much money be considered an act of fiscal discipline.
The bill is all about "jobs, jobs, jobs," declared Mr. Hastert, and he's right if he's referring to the Members' re-election prospects. The House version alone contained 3,700 special earmarks, doled out liberally across state and party lines.
Democrat Jim Clyburn retained another $25 million for his famous "Bridge to Nowhere," a project in rural South Carolina that has already sucked up $34 million in federal funds. The California delegation secured $1.4 billion for more than 479 projects, including $2.5 million for freeway landscaping. And ranking Transportation Committee Democrat James Oberstar snatched more than $14 million for Duluth, Minnesota, including $3.2 million for an extension of the longest paved recreational path in the nation.
Next to this highway extravagance, the energy bill seems almost a bargain at an estimated $66 billion or so. Minor highlights here include the repeal of a Depression-era law (Puhca) that will open up electricity sector investment; new reliability standards for the national power grid; more federal authority to settle sitting disputes over much-needed natural gas terminals; and an inventory of offshore oil and gas resources that may someday encourage more exploration.
We can also say this for the bill: It doesn't pick energy winners or losers. Everyone who produces so much as a kilowatt-hour is a winner in this subsidy-fest of tax credits and new federal mandates. There's $550 million for forest biomass, $100 million for hydroelectric production, and $1.8 billion for "clean coal." There are subsidies for wind, solar, nuclear and (despite $60 oil) even for oil and gas.
Most egregious is the gigantic transfer of wealth from car drivers to Midwest corn farmers (and Archer-Daniels-Midland) via a new 7.5-billion-gallon-a-year ethanol mandate, which will raise gas prices by as much as a dime a gallon on the East and West coasts. Oh, and don't forget the $15 billion (a 155% increase) in federal home heating subsidies, $100 million for "fuel cell" school buses, and $6 million for a government program to encourage people to ride their bikes -- presumably along Mr. Oberstar's newly paved trail.
All of this points up the bill's underlying mortal failing, which is that it abandons the lesson of the 1980s that the best way to ensure abundant energy supplies is to let the price system work. At least the House-Senate conferees dropped a Senate provision that would have mandated that 10% of all electricity come from "renewable" sources by 2020, regardless of supply and demand. Although in return for killing this, the House had to drop its liability protection for producers of MTBE, a gas additive that Congress itself mandated in 1990 but now wants to feed to the trial bar.
It's too much to hope that Mr. Bush will target one of these fiascoes with his first veto; any chance of a highway veto vanished when Mr. Hastert scheduled the bill immediately after Cafta. At least the Members are leaving town for August; too bad they plan to come back. |
