House Republicans Try to Revive Bush Energy Plan

The House on Tuesday passed a pair of energy bills and was expected to approve three more today in what Republican lawmakers said was a strategy to revive President Bush’s overhaul of the nation’s energy policy.

But Senate Democrats accused the House GOP leadership of playing politics by refusing to strip from the overall legislation -- which stalled in the Senate last year -- a provision that would shield the manufacturers of a controversial fuel additive from environmental lawsuits.

The additive methyl tertiary butyl ether, or MTBE, is made primarily in House Republican leader Tom DeLay’s home state of Texas, and DeLay has refused to drop the provision, which a number of oil companies also support.

The more sweeping measure approved Tuesday, by a 244-178 vote, calls for a wide range of measures designed to promote energy conservation and production. It would mandate greater use of corn-based ethanol -- a popular measure in the Midwest -- and seek to strengthen the electric grid. The other bill that was approved would streamline the development of energy facilities on federal land.

Included in the measures due to be voted on today are provisions to open a portion of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling and to allow regions with tough smog standards, such as the Los Angeles area, to use fuel from other parts of the country in the event of serious supply disruptions.

All the GOP-drafted measures have drawn opposition from environmental groups, which contend they would harm the environment or tilt too far toward promoting production over conservation.

The bills are designed -- at a time of heightened public concern about high gasoline prices -- to raise the political pressure on the Senate to approve the first overhaul of national energy policy in more than a decade. Bush has called such action critical to job growth and national security. The average price at the pump reached a record high of $2.32 a gallon on May 31 for self-serve regular in California before dropping this week to an average of just under $2.28. But the latter is still 50 cents above the average of a year ago.

During House debate, Rep. Lois Capps (D-Santa Barbara) said the energy bills had more to do with election-year politics than lower energy prices. “The Republican leadership wants to look as if it is doing something about record-high gas prices,” she said.

House Republicans on Tuesday assailed Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle -- who faces a tough reelection campaign in his home state of South Dakota -- accusing him of blocking passage of the bill that would benefit his state’s ethanol industry.

“While the Democrats have hamstrung the energy bill in the Senate, gas prices have risen and the Northeast was struck with the largest blackout in history,” DeLay said. “The summer traveling season is upon us -- the fourth since the president first delivered his legislation to us -- and still the American people wait for action.”

Daschle, however, accused House Republicans of holding “compromise hostage to ideology” -- citing GOP leaders’ insistence that the bill include the liability protections for MTBE.

The substance has been blamed for contaminating water supplies from California to New Hampshire, a major reason some Senate Republicans joined Democrats last year in opposing the bill.

There was no sign that the new House offensive was having any effect in changing views in the Senate.

Republicans said they hoped to secure more votes -- especially those of senators from coal-producing West Virginia -- by attaching to the energy overhaul a provision that would use oil-drilling revenue to pay health benefits for retired coal miners. A similar effort in 2002 failed to win the support of senators from steel-producing states.