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Politics : The Donkey's Inn -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mephisto who wrote (1547)	12/17/2001 7:24:37 PM
From: Mephisto	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15516

US House panel shelves electricity bill amid Enron worries ``I ... don't understand why so many from Texas are anxious to apply new rules to the rest of the country, but don't want those rules to apply to Texas,'' Waxman said." Monday December 17, 3:33 pm Eastern Time By Chris Baltimore WASHINGTON, Dec 17 (Reuters) - The Texas Republican shepherding legislation on electricity deregulation through the U.S.House of Representatives on Monday postponed plans for a bill-writing session until February. Rep. Joe Barton announced the move after a letter circulated among Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee asking for a delay amid the collapse of Enron Corp. (NYSE:ENE), congressional sources told Reuters. Barton said in a statement he had enough votes for the subcommittee to pass the bill at a planned mark-up on Wednesday. But the lawmaker said he would delay the bill-drafting because ``members of Congress are people too, and this week is the time for them to be focusing on shopping for their families rather than the intricacies of electricity restructuring.'' Members of the Republican-controlled subcommittee will meet on Tuesday and make opening statements on the bill, but delay further action until February, Barton said. At an Energy and Air Quality subcommittee hearing on the bill last week, Democratic members pointed repeatedly to Enron's predicament as reason to delay the bill, which would open the $220 billion U.S. electricity industry to greater competition. Some Democrats on the panel said Enron, a long-time posterchild of deregulation now turned pariah, was the prime mover behind a Republican-written deregulation bill. Several congressional panels have launched investigations into various aspects of Enron's downfall. Rep. Rick Boucher, the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, said Enron was not the main cause of the delay. ``It was issues at the heart of our federal scheme for deregulation of wholesale power markets that necessitated this postponement,'' Boucher told Reuters in an interview. ``The Enron corporate collapse creates another level of uncertainty,'' Boucher said. ``But my sense is that Enron probably alone would not have necessitated the postponement.'' Consensus has yet to develop on the panel about several elements of Barton's proposed bill, including authority of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to review mergers, condemn state lands for transmission line construction, and control membership of regional transmission organizations, he said. ANTI-TEXAS SENTIMENT Enron, a longtime proponent of deregulation, transformed itself from a small pipeline company into the nation's biggest trader of electricity and natural gas. The firm's downfall has been linked to its accounting practices and large debts. In a letter to FERC Chairman Pat Wood, California Rep. Henry Waxman, a Democrat, took Wood to task for encouraging Barton to leave Texas out of wide-sweeping transmission grid reforms that would apply to the rest of the country. Before joining FERC, Wood served as chairman of the Public Utility Commission of Texas, and is a political ally of President George Bush, who hails from the Longhorn State. In testimony last week, Wood said that applying such rules to Texas would slow the progress of reforms already underway there. ``It is ironic ... that some of the most controversial provisions of (Barton's bill) do not appear to apply to Texas,'' Waxman wrote in the letter, which was made public on Monday. ``I ... don't understand why so many from Texas are anxious to apply new rules to the rest of the country, but don't want those rules to apply to Texas,'' Waxman said. biz.yahoo.com