House GOP Task Force Unveils Plan to Dismantle Energy Dept.

Escalating their campaign to scale back the sprawling federal bureaucracy, a task force of House Republicans on Thursday unveiled a plan for dismantling the U.S. Department of Energy. But they face powerful opposition--even within their own party.

The plan, if implemented, would abolish energy research programs that critics see as a form of “corporate welfare,” sell off federal hydroelectric facilities and other assets and transfer many defense-related programs to the Pentagon. It also would set up a commission to decide the future of the department’s network of laboratories and research facilities, which includes two major labs in California.

But the plan faces opposition from well-placed Republicans--such as Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.)--whose home states have a big stake in Energy Department programs.

“We’re going to have to fight some of our own people to get it done,” said House Budget Committee Chairman John R. Kasich (R-Ohio). “This ain’t beanbag.”

The Energy Department was created in 1977 in response to the gas lines and energy crisis that occurred during the Jimmy Carter Administration. President Ronald Reagan proposed killing the department but the idea went nowhere. Now, the department has been targeted by the big class of House Republican freshmen who came to office clamoring to scale back government. House Republicans have already unveiled plans to abolish the Departments of Education and Commerce and will issue plans for eliminating the Department of Housing and Urban Development in coming weeks.

The abolition of those departments has also been endorsed by Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination.

Critics of the department said that managing energy production and distribution should be left to the free market, not the federal government.

“The energy bureaucracy is a recently created experiment in centralized management,” said Rep. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.). “Not only has the government gone beyond its appropriate role but it has failed in its mission. It’s time to pull the plug on the experiment.”

But the department’s defenders said that it carries out crucial functions in the national interest--such as nuclear waste cleanup and research--that the free market would not address.

“I am obviously opposed to what I consider to be very poorly thought-through approaches to getting rid of the Department of Energy,” said Domenici, who chairs a subcommittee that oversees energy appropriations as well as heading the Budget Committee. “I will resist anything that is arbitrary.”

Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), chairman of the task force that drafted the plan to abolish the Energy Department, said it would save at least $20 billion over five years--mostly from the sale of federal assets.

Under the House GOP proposal, the government would sell off all five power marketing administrations, a network of federally owned hydroelectric power facilities, including the Bonneville Power Administration in the Pacific Northwest. Sen. Mark O. Hatfield (R-Ore.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, vehemently opposes selling off Bonneville, as does President Clinton. However, the Administration has called for selling off the other four.

The plan calls for eliminating or phasing out several energy research programs, including those concerned with clean coal, fossil energy and energy conservation programs. Deputy Secretary of Energy Bill White defended the programs, saying that many had helped increase the nation’s energy efficiency. “These programs have had results,” White said.

To evaluate and scale back the department’s laboratories and research programs, the proposal calls for establishing a commission like that which Congress established to close military bases. The task force calls for transferring to the Pentagon all of the Energy Department’s defense-related programs.