ELECTIONS ‘94: IMPACT ON BUSINESS : Key House Panel to Be Overhauled by Republicans : Congress: A scaled-back Energy, Commerce committee may suit business better.

When incoming Republican leaders met last week to fulfill an election pledge to slash House committees, the panel targeted for one of the biggest hits was one that has long been a thorn in the side of the GOP and its business allies: the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Over the past 14 years, the committee has grown into a sprawling powerhouse under the chairmanship of Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich), a blustering former prosecutor who earned the nickname “The Truck” for being one of Congress’ toughest investigators.

His 130-member committee staff has made a career of going after high and mighty business figures such as deposed junk bond king Michael R. Milken, assorted defense contractors and even Los Angeles-based First Executive Corp., whose president, Fred Carr, was questioned about the soundness of the insurance company’s investments.

That era will end in January when Dingell’s likely replacement--Rep. Thomas J. Bliley Jr. (R-Va.), a self-described “genteel conservative”--takes over as chairman. Although Bliley has declined to comment publicly on his agenda, pending his appointment, most observers expect the committee to be less regulatory and far friendlier to business.

“If ever there was a committee on Capitol Hill that made companies quake in their boots, it was the Energy and Commerce Committee,” said Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington-based research group on government ethics. “That committee, as much as any other committee on Capitol Hill, went after industry. I would think there are a lot of people who have come to detest John Dingell and his committee, and are celebrating right now.”

For corporate America as well as American consumers, the pending change in leadership at the committee may be one of the most pivotal post-election events of the 1994 campaign.

Billions of dollars ride on the decisions of the committee, which oversees environmental regulation, securities markets, health care, telecommunications, railroads, consumer protection, tourism and even some trade issues. So extensive is the panel’s reach that one committee aide joked that its jurisdiction is rumored to extend to “everything that moves, bleeds or burns.”

It remains to be seen, however, whether corporate America will find deliverance in Bliley, a former Democrat who operated a funeral home before he successfully ran for mayor of Richmond, Va. Some issues taken up by the committee--telecommunications, for example--have historically been so nonpartisan that House bills to promote cable re-regulation and telecommunications competition have passed by overwhelming margins.

What’s more, if his fellow Republicans have their way, the committee Bliley takes over may only be a shadow of its former self.

That’s because Republicans are considering a proposal to rename the committee the Health and Commerce Committee and slash its staff by half, to about 60.

Sources familiar with the Republican discussions say a task force is considering a proposal that would strip the committee of its current oversight of environmental issues, railroads, energy and some securities issues. The panel would continue to oversee telecommunications, health care, insurance and some business investment issues.

“We recognize the fact that we should give up some of this jurisdiction and spread it around,” said Rep. Dan Schaefer (R-Colo.), a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee. The committee, he added, has a huge jurisdiction: “Some 40% of all (congressional) legislation comes before the committee.”

Schaefer said the committee’s size has created a regulatory excess epitomized by lawmakers like Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), who chairs Energy and Commerce’s subcommittee on health and environment and has been a big proponent of tougher anti-smoking laws.

“Henry Waxman, year after year, was pushing new regulation and thereby driving up costs in the health care arena,” Schaefer said. “We’re trying to avoid that.”

Despite talk of reining in the committee--talk which must survive lengthy turf battles--Bliley will, nevertheless, be a figure to be reckoned with. Already, as a result of his imminent appointment, the Virginian has achieved new prominence.

“In the past, the only calls we would get were from papers like the Richmond Times (Dispatch) or the Green County Record in Standardsville, Va. But the day after the elections, I came back to my office and had 47 calls from everybody, from the ‘Today Show’ to CBS News,” said Bliley’s press secretary, Charles Boesel. When asked about Bliley’s last major TV appearance, Boesel mused, “Hmmmm, I don’t know. It may have been 1987 on CNN.”

Colleagues, staff members and lobbyists say Bliley is highly respected and has gotten along well even with his Democratic adversaries, especially Dingell.

“Bliley is not an ideologue,” said David Vienna, a Washington lobbyist for the Pacific Stock Exchange and other securities industry groups. “He’s tended to work in a bipartisan way on the committee. He’s a consensus builder . . . . I don’t expect that to change.”

Even so, the Republican landslide this month has imbued the GOP with a new swagger that’s not likely to fade when Republicans make up the majority of both houses of Congress next year.

In a recent speech before the Media Institute in Washington, Roy Neel, a former Clinton Administration official who now heads the United States Telephone Assn., predicted the new Congress will be “crankier and more ornery and partisan” than in the past. “I don’t for a moment believe that a general spirit of cooperation will emerge from divided government next year.”

Bliley is not talking for the record yet, but his political background gives some indications as to where his legislative interests may lie.

He co-sponsored the bill that led to the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1994 that passed the House but not the Senate. Bliley was also a key force behind a health care measure Republicans offered as an alternative to the Clinton Administration’s sweeping plan, and effectively blocked Dingell from reporting Clinton’s plan out of committee.

More tellingly, Bliley’s Richmond-area congressional district is home to a major AT&T; plant, as well as giant cigarette maker Philip Morris Co. As a result, he is expected to pay close attention to the tobacco industry and telecommunications.

Between 1987 and 1992, Bliley led the House in campaign donations from tobacco-linked interests and individuals, according to the Sunshine Press of Washington, a news service that focuses on campaign finance. But in the 18 months ended in June, tobacco political action committees gave nearly comparable amounts to Bliley ($18,700) and Dingell ($14,000), according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Already, Rep. Jack Fields (R-Tex.), the likely head of the Energy and Commerce subcommittee that oversees telecommunications and finance, has huddled with Bliley and other Republicans to discuss putting telecommunications reform legislation back on the fast track.

Bliley is also expected to have an impact on other lesser-known issues that have galvanized the Energy and Commerce’s subcommittees in the past.

Bliley and Fields are likely to back away from efforts initiated by telecommunications and finance subcommittee Chairman Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) to impose new regulations to control allegedly violent television programs. Bliley is also expected to end Dingell’s fledgling probe of the insurance industry.

“I would think that Mr. Bliley will clearly focus on deregulation and reshaping what he would regard as the Great Society programs,” Rep. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said. “The challenges for him (are) to make sure that he can keep the scalpel on trimming true inefficiencies in government and not let his scalpel whack deeply into true human needs.”

Jim Wholey, a Washington lawyer and cable industry lobbyist who served as an aide to Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.), said many industry executives who once complained about excessive federal regulation may not be hankering to roll back the clock, even with their Republican friends in charge.

“There’s a real sense that the Federal Communications Commission has overreached with its new cable rules . . . and some parts of the Cable Act passed by Congress (two years ago) are really bad,” Wholey said. “But industry has already learned to live with much of the Cable Act, and it’s almost as much trouble to undo it now as it is to get along with it.”

Similarly, Bliley’s protection of the tobacco industry may prevent passage of any new regulatory initiatives. But, observers say, it’s unlikely he will be able to roll back existing anti-smoking laws.

“It’s a great (subcommittee) loss to lose Henry Waxman, who’s been fighting the tobacco industry all of these years,” said Elaine Lamy, executive director of Infact, a Boston-based anti-smoking group that strongly supported the California Democrat’s efforts to impose further restrictions on the tobacco industry. “But polls have shown that the public firmly backs these advertising restrictions and (cigarette) excise taxes. There’s no way those will be repealed.”

And some skeptics, noting that Republicans, like Democrats, are interested in power and self-preservation, doubt that the GOP will follow through on its promise to significantly rein in Energy and Commerce.