Senate Kills Stiffer Fuel Standards
The Senate on Wednesday soundly rejected tougher fuel economy standards for cars, SUVs and other vehicles, delivering a blow to environmentalists and putting in doubt whether Congress will pass a comprehensive energy bill this year.
In a victory for the auto industry and auto unions, the push for stricter fuel efficiency was thwarted by a coalition of Democrats from vehicle-producing and rural states and Republicans dubious of new regulation.
The Senate instead approved a measure backed by the auto industry and unions that would leave it to the Department of Transportation to set the fuel economy standards. Senators also voted to bar the federal agency from increasing miles-per-gallon requirements for pickup trucks, even if it raises the standards for other vehicles.
The votes virtually ensure that if an energy bill emerges from Congress, it will not include a major increase in vehicle fuel efficiency. That, along with an upcoming Senate vote expected to reject President Bush’s call to open Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, could doom the bill, one of the president’s domestic priorities.
With both the drilling proposal and new fuel economy standards eliminated, there may not be sufficient remaining inducements for Republicans and Democrats to reach agreement on a final bill.
Proponents of the tougher fuel efficiency standards, led by Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), framed Wednesday’s debate as a national security issue, the biggest step that Congress could take to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
“We bowed down to the special interests on fuel efficiency and as a result of it, we are going to bow down to [the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries] for decades to come,” charged Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), a supporter of the tougher standards.
Opponents, led by Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.), portrayed the proposed standards as a threat to auto worker jobs, a recipe for more highway accidents and an assault on an American freedom: the right to own an SUV, pickup or any other vehicle of choice.
“I don’t want to tell a mom in my state she should not get an SUV because Congress decided that would be a bad choice,” Bond said.
In a moment that crystallized the arguments, Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) pointed to a photo of a minuscule purple car and suggested that that was the future awaiting Americans if the Kerry-McCain proposal passed.
“This may be fine in Boston or Chicago, but it’s not fine in Lucedale, Miss., or Des Moines, Iowa, or a lot of other places,” he said.
Bush also opposed the Kerry-McCain proposal. The Bush-backed energy legislation that cleared the House last year calls for minimal increases in the fuel economy standards.
Kerry and McCain complained that their proposal’s impact was being misrepresented. Kerry repeatedly said that auto makers could improve fuel efficiency without forcing Americans into smaller vehicles. “People aren’t going to be farming in compact cars,” he said.
At issue is the average fuel economy figure that auto makers must achieve for their vehicle fleets. Currently, they must meet an average of 27.5 mpg for cars and 20.7 mpg for light trucks, a category that includes sport-utility vehicles, minivans and pickups.
Senators Cite Savings in Oil, Drop in Pollution
Kerry and McCain proposed combining the two categories and raising the standard to 35 mpg by 2015 (the current overall average is about 24 mpg).
That would have been the biggest increase since the fuel economy measure was signed into law in 1975. And, Kerry and McCain stressed, it would have saved 1 million barrels of oil a day by 2015, as well as reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, a gas linked to global warming.
Under the measure the Senate approved as an alternative, traffic safety administrators at the Department of Transportation would have 15 months to set revised standards for light trucks and 24 months for cars. Factors to be considered would include how the standards would affect vehicle safety and auto industry jobs. If the agency does not act, Congress could set the standards.
Environmentalists said it was unlikely that the agency would mandate significant improvements.
“Senators have chosen political security over national security,” said David M. Nemtzow, president of the Alliance to Save Energy, a Washington-based advocacy group.
But Robert Liberatore, senior vice president of external affairs for DaimlerChrysler, said: “We expect and are planning for increases in our corporate average fuel economy in the coming years and commit to work with [federal transportation officials] to do so in a way that does not compromise safety.”
Supporters of the measure, which passed 62 to 38, said it would allow standards to be based on science, not an arbitrary figure drawn up on the Senate floor.
“We all share the important goals of improving fuel economy in cars and protecting our environment, and our bill will achieve these results without costing countless U.S. jobs,” said Levin, the proposal’s chief proponent.
The amendment also calls for more generous tax incentives to encourage consumers to buy fuel-efficient cars powered by alternative fuels and increased government funding for research into other fuel-efficient vehicles. Wednesday’s Senate action continued a decade-long stalemate on energy policy that has divided Congress nearly as much along regional as party lines.
While five Republicans from the Northeast and West Coast joined McCain in opposing the measure, the proposal succeeded because of defections from 19 Senate Democrats representing both auto-producing and farm states, most of them in the heartland.
That alignment reflects opponents’ success in defining the issue not only as an economic threat to the auto industry but a cultural threat to rural values, symbolized by the pickup truck.
Indeed, the vote suggested that the rural arm of the opponents’ lobbying effort was much more successful than its suburban component. In ads opposing the bill, the auto industry portrayed the legislation as a threat both to suburban “soccer moms” carting kids in SUVs, and to rural families who depend on pickup trucks.
But Democrats from such big suburban states as Illinois, California and New Jersey--where environmentalists are also strong--uniformly opposed the amendment leaving fuel economy decisions to Transportation Department officials. (California’s Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein voted against the measure.)
Instead, the Democratic support for the proposal came from either states with significant auto production facilities--such as Michigan, Missouri, Georgia and Indiana--or a large number of light truck owners, or both.
Mikulski Represents the Lone Exception
Of the 19 Democrats who voted for the amendment, 18 are from states where more new trucks than cars were registered last year, according to figures from the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. The only exception, Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), comes from a state with auto production plants.
Those defections underscored the anxiety among Democrats from rural states since the 2000 election, in which the party’s vote suffered in small-town and farming communities across America. “Democrats in rural states are just extraordinarily sensitive to taking any action that can be portrayed as somehow hostile to the fabric of the society in which they live,” said one senior Democratic Party strategist. “And trucks are a big part of that.”
That sensitivity was underscored by the votes of Sens. Zell Miller (D-Ga.) and Phil Gramm (R-Texas) to exempt pickup trucks from future increases in fuel economy standards. That amendment passed on a 56-44 vote.
In opposition, Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, argued that the amendment would condemn rural drivers to spending more on gasoline by exempting manufacturers from any obligation to improve fuel performance on pickup trucks.
But Miller declared the measure “a vote for the working man [and] . . . a vote for rural America.”
The other key factor in Wednesday’s results was the joint opposition to the tougher fuel economy standards from the auto industry and the United Auto Workers.
“That’s a critical factor in putting fear in the hearts of Democrats,” said John Podesta, a former White House chief of staff for President Clinton who works with environmental groups.
