Congress Ready to Compromise on Energy
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In Congress, it’s generally the minority political party left displeased, as is the example with an across-the-board energy bill that passed the House last week.
“The method of getting there is a fraud from this point of view,” said Iowa’s U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley in a conference call with reporters. “Republicans allow for regulators and states to choose in, but by choosing in, they are going to get royalties, and the Democrats have it manipulated so that they have to choose in, but there’s no royalties. There’s no motivators for drilling offshore.”
Grassley said he believes it’s expected the Senate will authorize an all-around parcel with reference to unconventional energy but fall short on drilling.
“I agree with the Democrats on conservation and alternative energy, but I disagree with them on drilling,” Grassley said. “I always say that drilling is the third and necessary leg of a three-legged stool.”
Grassley said if the drilling expression of the bill fails, it will become a crusade instrument of the Republicans to gain ground in Congress and win the White House.
Iowa’s junior Sen. Tom Harkin, a Democrat, is less optimistic a package will make it through the Senate, with a week left until adjournment.
“We’re hopeful that we can pull something together in the next week,” Harkin said. “The House has passed its energy bill. I don’t know if that will go through over here.”
Harkin said there are a couple of preparations — including a repeal of a deduction for major oil companies — in the House bill that Republicans in the Senate have objected to.
“We’d be able to move on these a lot faster if the Republicans were not filibustering everything … so that means we won’t be able to bring up the energy bill until next week,” Harkin said.
Both senators said regardless of the comprehensive bill, the Senate will pass an extension on tax credits for alternative energies. Harkin said it also will include means of encouraging the construction of ethanol pipelines.
Midwest Democrats Phil Hare and Dave Loebsack were pleased with what the House passed but agreed there can always be more in the way of alternative energies, which they hope the Senate will add.
“Any energy policy that gets adopted, for me, has to be as comprehensive as possible, and it needs to focus on obviously reducing our depending on foreign oil in particular, reducing our dependence on fossil fuels,” said Loebsack, Iowa’s 2nd District congressman.
Loebsack said the bill is a compromise that allows for “responsible exploration” on the outer-continental shelf between 50 and 100 miles offshore, if states opt in. Illinois’ 17th District congressman said some action needed to be taken on drilling, otherwise a moratorium would end, which would allow drilling within three miles of the coast.
“I think this gives us an opportunity to drill … even though we can’t drill our way out of this,” Hare said.
He said the oil offshore could get as much as 3 percent of the world’s oil supply, whereas the United States currently consumed 25 percent of it.
Loebsack’s Republican opponent Mariannette Miller-Meeks, an Ottumwa ophthalmologist, said the package passed by the House is an energy package in costume.
“They are in essence telling people that they understand the pain that they’re going through when they have to pay the prices at the pump, but yet within the bill, the offshore drilling is limited to 100 miles off the coastline when we know that the documented reserves are within 50 miles of the coastline,” Miller-Meeks said.
Like Grassley, Miller-Meeks is supportive of alternative energies. She said those will take time to develop, whereas drilling can be up and running within three to four years.
Loebsack said the key to the package’s passage is not so much dependent on the Senate, but on President Bush’s willingness to sign it into law.
“We’ll see how it turns out,” Loebsack said. “A lot of this will come back to President Bush and what he does, and he really ought to be on the side of Iowans who are really struggling to afford gas and on the side of the country that really needs to move away from fossil fuels.”
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