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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SecularBull who wrote (154097)	6/18/2001 11:03:58 PM
From: calgal	Respond to of 769670

06/18/2001 - Updated 10:48 PM ET Energy prices restricted in West By Scott Bowles, USA TODAY LOS ANGELES — Federal regulators ordered price restrictions Monday on electricity sold throughout the West to stave off skyrocketing energy costs threatening California this summer. Consumers will likely see little, if any, relief in their electricity bills. The 5-0 vote by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in Washington, D.C., should hold steady the prices that power plant operators can charge, but analysts say it will not bring the rate rollbacks or stricter price caps that California Gov. Gray Davis had sought. Audio Bush: Price relief, not controls Gov. Gray Davis, D-Calif.: Decision is a start Related story Davis announces deal to spare utility customers $750M debt The vote came after daylong negotiations and heavy lobbying — not only from Democrats newly in charge of the Senate, but also from House Republicans worried that spiraling power prices in the West could affect the election in 2002. The measure, which extended previous restrictions during power emergencies to all sales around the clock, received a tepid endorsement from President Bush, who has opposed strict price controls on electricity. He described the action as a "mechanism to mitigate any severe price spike that may occur, which is completely different from price controls." The regulatory action came as California dodged rolling blackouts despite temperatures higher than 100 degrees in much of the state. The state has recorded six days of outages this year but none since May 8. With the heat wave expected to continue through Wednesday, however, officials warned residents and businesses that blackouts remain a possibility. FERC Chairman Curt Hébert said the order, effective through September 2002, will benefit consumers but also will "provide every incentive for suppliers to reduce costs." In addition to California, the order covers Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. Davis, a Democrat, called the measure "a step in the right direction, but there is much more they should do. For one thing, Californians have been overcharged billion of dollars for electricity. To date, we've not received one cent in refunds." Davis has been targeted by a national Republican television advertising campaign that calls the state's power interruptions "grayouts" and accuses him of bungling the crisis. Jerry Taylor, an analyst with the Cato Institute, a libertarian public policy research foundation in Washington, said the order "won't add a single megawatt to the grid and won't reduce a single megawatt of consumption from the grid." Contributing: Laurence McQuillan in Washington usatoday.com