Republican Rallies Delegation to Get Energy Cap

Rep. Duncan Hunter isn’t well known outside of his El Cajon district. But the conservative Republican hopes to help California out of its electricity crisis by persuading a reluctant Congress and President Bush to support temporary price caps on wholesale power supplies.

Hunter is trying to bring together the state’s famously fractious 52-member House delegation to support federal legislation that would empower the U.S. energy secretary to impose the caps. He is pushing the idea, although price caps are opposed by Bush and certain to draw opposition from lawmakers from other states who worry about California sapping their power supplies and who believe that the Golden State brought on the problem itself. And if that wasn’t enough, the power generators are sure to lobby hard to defeat his legislation.

Call him an optimist.

Hunter knows how to put up a fight. He was an Army Ranger in Vietnam. And as a congressman, he once used a sledgehammer to make a point--smashing a Toshiba radio to protest the company’s sale of high-technology products to the Soviet Union.

If supporters of price caps hope to pass legislation through the GOP-controlled Congress, they need Republicans like Hunter to take up the cause.

By late Monday, Hunter and his co-sponsor, Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Atherton), had garnered the support of at least eight of their California House colleagues--four Republicans and four Democrats. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) introduced a similar bill in the Senate on Monday. And Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) on Monday reintroduced a measure that would impose a price cap retroactively and provide refunds to consumers.

But in a sign of how difficult it is to bring together the state’s delegation, Rep. Bob Filner (D-San Diego) protested that the Hunter legislation didn’t go far enough, and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) objected that it went too far.

“The proposal is consistent with the type of liberal nonsense that got us into this trouble in the first place,” Rohrabacher said. “Price caps are nothing but extremely short-term comfort at the price of major problems in the near future.” He and other critics said price caps will discourage the building of power plants.

Filner said he plans to reintroduce a bill in the House--similar to the Boxer-sponsored measure in the Senate--that would cap wholesale electricity prices retroactively to last summer and provide refunds to consumers and utilities. The measure died without even a committee hearing last year.

“Any congressional action on this issue cannot just look forward, but also must look back to last summer when Californians--particularly those in San Diego County who were the first affected by the price gouging and market manipulation of the huge, out-of-state energy generators and marketers--paid unjust and unreasonable rates,” Filner said.

In a proposal sure to win support from fellow conservatives, he is drafting another bill that would empower the president to suspend federal regulations to speed up the construction of power plants in an emergency.

Hunter defended his call for price caps, citing a 40-worker machine shop in his district where the electric bill shot up from $28,904 a month last year to $114,933 for the same period this year, despite a slight decrease in electricity usage.

“Remember, competition requires choice,” Hunter said.

The price cap legislation would permit the energy secretary to place a fixed cap on wholesale electricity supplies in the West, or set reasonable rates of return for power generators.

The measure, Hunter said, would serve to stabilize wholesale electricity costs until enough new generation capacity is developed and a truly competitive power market emerges.

Supporters said the legislation would still allow generators to make a profit.

Many lawmakers, including some of Hunter’s California colleagues, see the electricity crisis as Sacramento’s problem, one created by a faulty state deregulation law.

“We’ve got to show them the severity of the problem,” Hunter said in an interview.

Hunter, 52, has taken on tough fights before--and won. He upset a nine-term Democrat to win election to the House in Ronald Reagan’s landslide victory in 1980.

As a senior Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, he is among Congress’ most outspoken defense hawks, advocating a national missile defense system. He has taken a hard line on illegal immigration. And although he originally supported Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign, he flew to Florida after the election to fight for counting thousands of disputed absentee ballots from overseas military personnel.

He has opposed free trade measures, voting against normal trade relations with China. He led the effort in 1998 to prohibit a Chinese shipping company from leasing part of the former Long Beach Naval Station, contending that the Communists would use the former base for military purposes and intelligence gathering.

Except for a few lawmakers, California’s representatives in Washington have had little to say about a federal role in the electricity crisis.

Feinstein met recently with Bush Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, a former Senate colleague, and is seeking a meeting with the president. The new administration has made no commitment on whether it will extend an emergency order requiring power plant operators to sell electricity to California. The order expires at midnight tonight.

Increasingly, members of the delegation have taken an interest in the crisis as the lights have begun to go out in their districts. Still, a number of California lawmakers did not return calls seeking their thoughts on solving the crisis.

Hunter, Feinstein and Eshoo have sent a letter urging the delegation to speak “in a single, unified voice”--ironically, as it did in 1997 when the entire delegation urged Congress to keep its hands off the state’s deregulation plan.

“I believe California shares a major responsibility,” Feinstein said. “However, the federal government also has a major responsibility because the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission holds the only authority over energy generators and marketers.”

But the commission has declined to impose strict caps.

“This will be an uphill battle,” she added. “However, the impact of this crisis is potentially crippling not only to California’s economy, but to the entire nation, and I believe the members of Congress will come to realize this fact.”