Congress conserves energy by letting boondoggle die

Giving the energy bill a rest was a good idea. The bill working its way through Congress had become so bloated with special interest provisions that it could barely move.
While the legislation had passed the House, the Senate abandoned it late Monday after it became clear a dispute over the gasoline additive MTBE was not going to be resolved and a filibuster was inevitable. While the proposed protection of the producers of MTBE against future lawsuits turned out to be the sticking point in the Senate, there were plenty of reasons to reject this pork-filled answer to the nation's energy problems.
Another budget buster
For one thing, it was -- as so much that comes out this conservative Congress -- a budget buster. The cost was $31 billion, most of which would be added to the nation's growing deficit.
One Republican opponent of the bill in the Senate, John Kyl, R-Ariz., noted that the Senate approved $15 billion in tax breaks for various energy-related special interests while the House gave $17 billion. But the compromise worked out in the final bill would have provided $23.6 billion. "Guess who lost -- the taxpayer," Kyl said.
Without saying so, Kyl has put his finger on a growing problem in Washington. Bills are being worked out in the House and Senate in the relative light of day, then go behind the closed doors of conference committees, where major changes are made. The House and Senate are expected to approve these conference measures without question, and too often they do.
The Republican leadership has vowed to revive the stalled 1,200-page bill when Congress returns in January. By then maybe members of Congress will have gotten around to reading it, and perhaps there will be some real debate on what's in there, beyond the liability protections for MTBE producers (many of whom are in Texas, which explains why House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was willing to see the bill die rather than have it pass without the MTBE provisions).
The bill contains $26 billion in tax cuts and subsidies for the oil and gas, coal and utility industries, much of which would reward them for what they would do anyway. The addition of ethanol subsidies was done simply to get a few more farm-state senators on board, and made the vote closer than it would have been.
The long-range cost of the bill has been estimated as high as $80 billion over 10 years, and even that cost could increase because Congress played games with the expiration date of various tax cuts.
Focus, Congress, focus
There's no question that the nation's energy needs demand action from Congress. But this bill was more concerned with giving tax breaks to energy producers than providing for the nation's long-term energy demands.
If all the Republican leadership does after the first of the year is tweak this bill, and buy off a few of the remaining opponents, they will be doing the nation a great disservice.
If they need a reason to start fresh, they might consider how the unabashedly conservative Cato Institute characterized the bill. It said it was a mixture of corporate welfare, cynical politics and Soviet-style command economics. If that doesn't give conservatives in both houses pause, nothing will.