Energy, Medicare Bills Caught in Republican Spat
By Dan Morgan and Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, October 30, 2003; Page A01
Much of President Bush's legislative agenda for the year now hangs on this question: Can a plain-spoken Iowa farmer and an often irascible former professor from California put aside their differences long enough to help pass bills overhauling Medicare and establishing new energy policies?
With little time remaining in the 2003 congressional session, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) are representing their respective chambers in negotiations on a bill to add prescription drug benefits to Medicare and on tax provisions in a broad-based energy measure. Grassley chairs the Finance Committee, and Thomas the Ways and Means Committee; the powerful panels write the nation's tax and health laws.
But tensions between the two and their staffs are complicating efforts to resolve differences between the House and Senate, according to GOP officials. Their testy exchanges include Grassley's complaint last week of being "ridiculed" by his House counterpart. Grassley walked out of a late-evening negotiating session after Thomas snapped at a member of his staff.
"They just don't get along," said a senior Republican aide.
If Democrats and Republicans were at loggerheads, the dispute could be attributed to partisan politics. But this standoff involves stalwart Republicans and two of Congress's ablest legislators.
Despite GOP control of Congress and the White House, negotiations on the two showcase bills, underway since August, have moved at a snail's pace. Lawmakers reported some agreement on several Medicare issues this week, but not on the most divisive ones.
Grassley yesterday described the energy bill as "not dead, but gasping." It is hung up over an increasingly bitter disagreement between Grassley and Thomas over how to apportion tax subsidies to promote new domestic energy production. Thomas, whose district in the southern San Joaquin Valley is a center for the oil industry, favors substantial incentives for oil and gas.
But Grassley and a bipartisan group of senators want a wider share of incentives for renewable energy, especially ethanol fuel made from corn, diesel fuel made from biomass (such as soybeans), and wind-driven generators.
Grassley and his staff made clear this week their anger at Thomas for rejecting a carefully crafted deal among farm organizations, the oil industry and the highway lobby over the ethanol provisions. Finance Committee aides accused Thomas of being hostile and a "longtime opponent" of ethanol. That is sacrilege in Grassley's state and across the Farm Belt, where ethanol is viewed as a cleaner, renewable alternative to gasoline made from crude oil, as well as a long-term cure for low corn prices.
Yesterday, Thomas and Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) fired back at the Senate. "I don't think it serves any purpose to attempt to misrepresent or slant or fabricate . . . to influence outside the negotiating structure," Thomas said. "My goal is to make law, not to make myself look good."
Hastert blamed Grassley for the impasse. "Senator Grassley is being very obstinate and could potentially blow this whole energy bill," he said. In a sign that the White House has become concerned, Vice President Cheney visited the Capitol yesterday to urge key Republicans to get the bill moving, and President Bush spoke with some lawmakers by phone.
The public spat has highlighted the sharply contrasting styles of two of the nation's most powerful legislators.
Grassley generally prefers quiet deal-making to confrontation. Senate regulars describe him as a bit formal, but also friendly and folksy, befitting the Iowa farmer he is. Grassley returns every weekend to his 710-acre corn and soybean farm, where reporters calling from Washington often locate him in a barn working on a rickety tractor.
Thomas, by contrast, epitomizes the more partisan, aggressive spirit of the House GOP majority. He provoked an uproar this summer when he summoned the U.S. Capitol Police to oust some Democratic committee members from a meeting room during a dispute.
Later, in an tearful and apologetic address to the House, Thomas said his mother often remarked, "When they passed out moderation, you were hiding behind the door."
Thomas, a political science professor in Bakersfield before entering politics, was chosen by the Republican Steering Committee in 2001 to serve a six-year term as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. Although he is widely considered one of the House's most knowledgeable members, his independence and occasionally caustic manner have often ruffled feathers in the Republican Party as well as among Democrats.
A senior GOP lobbyist with close ties to Bush and Hastert said he doubted Thomas would be chosen chairman now, despite accomplishments that include guiding Bush's tax-cut agenda, trade legislation and the Medicare prescription drug bill through the House.
Last week, reporters asked Grassley what the Medicare negotiators were discussing. He replied that Thomas had "accused me of talking too much to the press," and he said: "I'm keeping my mouth shut. I'm not going to be ridiculed by him twice today."
The same day, Thomas surprised fellow conferees by outlining a proposed agreement for the bill. He and his staff had written it without outside consultation. "It was a total unilateral move," one source said. Grassley reportedly was furious.
In August, Grassley directed his staff to boycott Medicare negotiations with the House after Thomas rejected his request to work out a quick deal on increased payments to rural health care providers, a Grassley priority. The Senate staff ultimately returned to the talks with the matter unresolved.
Like that disagreement, the dispute over ethanol provisions in the energy bill is difficult to resolve.
Across much of the Midwest and Great Plains, farmers view a growing ethanol industry as a major economic hope. Proposals on the table would increase production of ethanol, now used mainly as a clean-fuel additive, from 2.7 billion gallons to 5 billion gallons annually in seven years. But Thomas has long been aware that the proposed ethanol mandate would raise gasoline prices in his state, which is far from midwestern ethanol refiners.
Because fuel blended with ethanol does not generate as much federal gasoline tax revenue, greater ethanol usage could mean less money for the Highway Trust Fund, which finances road projects. Under a proposed deal with the highway lobby, gasoline with ethanol would be fully taxed but refiners would receive a partial tax credit. But Thomas has rejected this plan, preferring to wait for Congress to take up highway legislation next year.
"We're not trying to stir the pot on any of this," said Christin Tinsworth, spokeswoman for the Ways and Means Committee. "All we want is an energy bill and a Medicare bill."
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