Divisions Multiply Over Bush Energy Plan

From the White House to the airwaves, the battle over energy policy heated up Monday as the Senate prepared for a debate that will expose divisions both between and within the parties.

Environmentalists, labor unions, business groups and the White House escalated their pressure on wavering lawmakers who will cast the deciding votes on questions such as oil drilling in the Alaskan wilderness or requiring auto manufacturers to increase the fuel efficiency of cars and trucks.

“As long as this takes to move through the Senate--and God knows how long that is going to be--you are going to see increased intensity and increased activity from both camps,” said business lobbyist Bruce Josten, a leader of the Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth, an industry-labor coalition supporting the Bush administration’s energy plan.

Betsy Loyless, political director of the League of Conservation Voters, said the fight against the plan “is the biggest environmental [lobbying] effort in over a decade. There is an enormous grass-roots effort going on around this country.”

President Bush, whom environmentalists have accused of overemphasizing production in the energy plan he introduced last year, sought Monday to highlight the initiative’s conservation side at an event featuring fuel-efficient hybrid cars parked on a White House driveway. Bush touted tax credits and federal research subsidies meant to encourage the development of cars that run on hydrogen-powered fuel cells or alternate between gas and electricity.

Meanwhile, the Energy and Economic Growth alliance and the Sierra Club have been financing competing radio messages aimed at influencing senators considered swing votes. The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers is funding radio ads that feature a suburban couple ridiculing the effort to require improved gas mileage on sport-utility vehicles. And environmentalists enlisted attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of the late Democratic presidential candidate, to call talk shows in the hope of generating opposition to drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The Senate debate could begin as soon as Wednesday. Most of the maneuvering leading up to it has followed familiar partisan lines, with Republicans generally lining up with business and Democrats with environmentalists. But there have been some surprises, such as the role being played by some big labor unions in the debate.

Two locals in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the main union supporting Bush’s call for drilling in the Arctic because of its job-generating potential, placed an ad earlier this month in a Florida newspaper attacking Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) for his strong opposition to the exploration proposal. Kerry is exploring a race for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination; Florida has obviously demonstrated itself to be a key state in presidential politics.

To underscore their point, Teamsters’ officials have hinted that they may also take out ads criticizing Kerry in Iowa, traditionally the site of the first nominating contest.

The ad accuses Kerry of opposing drilling in Alaska but supporting it off the coast of Florida, where it is unpopular. David Wade, Kerry’s spokesman, said the ad is wrong and that the senator opposes drilling off the Florida coast. The Sierra Club is preparing an ad defending Kerry that it hopes to place in the same Florida newspaper, the Tampa Tribune, by the end of this week.

The United Auto Workers union is a key foe of a major aspect of the Democratic alternative to Bush’s plan. A provision of the Democratic bill, drafted by Kerry and Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.), would require passenger cars and SUVs to average 35 miles per gallon by 2013. Passenger cars currently must meet a “corporate average fuel economy”--or CAFE--standard of 27.5 mpg. Sport-utility vehicles and light trucks are permitted to meet an average of 20.7 mpg.

Environmentalists view the proposed increase as the single most important step Congress can take to cut U.S. dependence on foreign oil and reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, a gas linked to global warming. But the UAW, though open to some fuel economy increase, believes the Kerry-Hollings bill would disproportionately hurt domestic auto manufacturers and thus “directly threatens the jobs of thousands of UAW members,” as the union put it in a recent statement.

During the congressional recess last week, the union jointly sponsored rallies with auto companies at plants in Michigan, Georgia, Louisiana and Missouri--all of which have Democratic senators considered potential votes against the Hollings-Kerry proposal. And workers at a DaimlerChrysler plant in Newark, Del., are circulating a petition they plan to send to Sen. Thomas Carper (D-Del.), another swing vote on the fuel-standard provision.

“I think the Democratic caucus is significantly divided on the issue,” said Alan Reuther, the UAW’s legislative director.

But many of the same Democratic senators, along with Republican moderates, are facing cross-pressures from environmentalists.

Last week, the Sierra Club targeted nine senators--including Democrats Zell Miller and Max Cleland of Georgia and Republicans Gordon Smith of Oregon and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania--in radio ads. The ads argued that raising the fuel economy standards was a better way to deal with the nation’s energy problems than drilling in Alaska.

Loyless said environmentalists also are “generating thousands of calls and e-mails into Senate offices.”

The Energy and Economic Growth alliance paid for radio ads in 14 states that touted drilling in the Alaskan refuge. Josten said the group is following up with grass-roots activity and will decide Friday whether to sponsor more ads.

One of the most intriguing ads in the battle, financed by the Alliance for Automobile Manufacturers, is targeted at the call for improved fuel-economy standards for SUVs.

“The government wants to take away my SUV,” the fictional Sally says to her husband, Joe, in one of the ads. “The Senate can change laws, but they can’t change reality. People need SUVs.”

The ads recall the health insurance industry’s famed “Harry and Louise” campaign, in which a fictional couple sat at the kitchen table berating Clinton’s 1994 health care reform legislation.

The Bush administration has not signaled its position on the plans to increase fuel economy standards, though most participants believe it would oppose increases as large as Kerry and Hollings are urging. But the administration is working energetically to build support for drilling in the Alaska refuge and the larger push for increased domestic energy production.

Even as Bush highlighted conservation Monday, he made clear that his priorities extend to the other side of the energy equation. “Any sound comprehensive energy policy must both increase production and reduce consumption,” he said.