GOP Senate Improves Odds for Bush’s Energy Plan

With Republicans increasing their majority in the Senate, President Bush is in a stronger position to finally win approval for his long-stalled bill to overhaul national energy policy and even appears within reach of achieving one of his most cherished goals: opening Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

The energy legislation and Arctic drilling are two of several administration-backed measures that gained new life from Tuesday’s elections. Others include legislation that would curb what Bush calls frivolous lawsuits, including a measure backed by the National Rifle Assn. to shield gun makers and sellers from lawsuits related to gun violence, and a bill that would make it a federal crime to circumvent parental notification laws by transporting a minor across state lines for an abortion.

Some of those bills passed the House but were blocked in the Senate by Democratic-led filibusters. But Republicans gained four more seats in the Senate -- increasing their number to 55 when the new Congress convenes in January -- and will need five more votes, instead of nine, to overcome filibusters and force votes on legislation.

“The new Senate makeup will likely help movement on energy legislation in the 109th Congress,” said Lee Fuller, vice president of government relations for the Independent Petroleum Assn. of America, a Washington trade group representing independent oil and natural gas producers.

An energy bill that includes measures to promote energy conservation and production passed the House last year. Its supporters in the Senate fell two votes short of overcoming a filibuster, though, so it never came to a vote in that chamber.

The bill would mandate greater use of ethanol, an alternative fuel made from corn -- a measure that Republican John Thune pledged to try to deliver to ethanol-producing South Dakota during his successful campaign to replace Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle. The legislation, a priority for the administration, also includes measures designed to strengthen the nation’s electric grid and prevent fuel supply shortages and price spikes, such as those that occurred during California’s energy crisis in 2000 and 2001.

It’s not clear whether the same energy bill would be brought back before the next Congress or whether it would be a new bill, or even a series of bills -- for example, one seeking to revive nuclear power, another seeking to promote the development of solar and wind energy.

Some pieces of the energy package already have been passed as parts of other legislation, including a federal loan guarantee to spur building of a pipeline to bring natural gas from Alaska to the lower 48 states.

“I don’t think it’s as easy as they think to pass an energy bill,” said Dan Becker, director of the Sierra Club’s global warming program. “If it were just a Democratic-Republican vote, we would have lost already. But there were a bunch of Republicans who voted with us for a variety of reasons, and I suspect that they will again.”

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said he would prefer that Congress take another vote on the energy bill during a lame-duck session this month. But if this Congress doesn’t act, he said, he is optimistic that the new Congress will pass a bill.

Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, predicted that Congress would send an energy bill to Bush next year -- and approve a separate bill authorizing energy exploration in the Arctic refuge.

And Brian Kennedy, a spokesman for Rep. Richard W. Pombo (R-Tracy), chairman of the House Resources Committee, said that on the first day of the new Congress his boss would introduce a bill to allow Arctic drilling.

Republicans are looking at once again attaching the drilling proposal to a budget measure that needs only a simple majority to pass the Senate. Last year, drilling supporters mustered 48 votes, meaning that, with Vice President Dick Cheney casting a tie-breaking vote, they now need two votes to prevail. Last year, five Democrats joined 43 Republicans in supporting the drilling.

Four newly elected Republicans -- Richard Burr of North Carolina, Mel Martinez of Florida, Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Thune -- are drilling proponents who will replace antidrilling Democrats. Pro-drilling forces are losing retiring Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.), whose successor, Democrat Ken Salazar, has come out against the drilling. In Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana and Oklahoma, the newly elected senators have the same positions on drilling as the retiring senators. That should leave the pro-drilling forces with a net of three more adherents, for a total of 51.

“Of course, I’m concerned about the Arctic,” said Betsy Loyless, vice president for policy for the League of Conservation Voters. But she said it was “too early to have a sense of the next Congress.”

Melinda Pierce, a Sierra Club lobbyist, said that “despite some losses of antidrilling senators” in Tuesday’s election, she hoped that drilling in the refuge would be blocked. “Protecting the Arctic refuge from drilling is a high-profile environmental issue, and polling continues to demonstrate that a consistent majority of the American public opposes opening the area to oil development,” she said.

Some of the newly elected Republican senators, as well as a few Republicans now in the Senate, are likely to object to the cost of the energy legislation -- nearly $26 billion in tax breaks to promote energy conservation and production, plus billions more for spending programs.

But Republican leaders have been working to make the bill more palatable to lawmakers from both parties. For example, they are trying to address concerns about a provision that would limit the liability of manufacturers of a gasoline additive blamed for contaminating water supplies.

Some Republicans from states contaminated by the fuel additive, MTBE, objected to the provision, complaining it could force their taxpayers to pick up the tab for cleaning up the contamination. But House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, whose home state of Texas has been a big producer of the fuel additive, has insisted on the liability shield.

NRA lobbyist Chris W. Cox said that the bigger GOP majority gave him hope of winning approval of a stalled bill that would shield gun makers and sellers from lawsuits related to gun violence, his organization’s top legislative priority.

The measure passed the House last year, but the NRA scuttled the measure in the Senate this year after gun-control advocates attached amendments that would have extended the federal ban on assault weapons and tightened background checks for sales at gun shows. Cox said Tuesday’s election gave the NRA a net gain of four friendly senators.