GOP Turns on a Dime, Decries Rebate

Republicans denounced their own gas price rebate plan Tuesday, acknowledging that sending a $100 check to American taxpayers would do little to ease the pain of high prices or address their cause.

The quick backtracking -- the Senate plan was announced with great fanfare just five days ago -- reflected the discord among GOP lawmakers as they confronted the political perils of $3-a-gallon gasoline.

The rhetoric was unusually sharp for an intramural fight. At his weekly meeting with reporters, House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) called the rebate idea “insulting” to taxpayers.

“The really insulting part of this whole proposal is the fact that somebody is offering $100 to every American family over this. This is not going to solve the problem,” he said. “I don’t like the proposal. And over the weekend I heard back from my constituents. They thought it was stupid.”

Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) said the idea had gained little traction among his colleagues and constituents.

“It wasn’t a very good idea,” Martinez said. “If it’s alive, it’s got a very weak pulse.”

The idea also failed to impress Edward P. Lazear, chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisors, who Tuesday told an audience at the Hudson Institute, a Washington public policy center, that the rebate proposal was problematic.

“One of the things we worry about when we cut the tax on gasoline is that it basically stimulates additional use,” Lazear said. “Over a longer period of time, it would be a significant problem ... because what it would do is it would encourage us to use more oil, not less, and that is the way we got to the situation right now.”

Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a member of the Republican leadership who is in a tough reelection fight, was one of the few who defended the proposal, describing it as “a way of trying to provide some help, some temporary help, at a time of gas price spikes this summer driving season.”

“While it is not a solution -- and we never pitched it as a solution -- we pitched it as part of an eight-point plan to increase supply, to decrease demand and to provide some temporary relief for consumers during this period of high prices,” Santorum told a news conference.

With the reelection season heating up, anxiety over energy prices is reaching a fever pitch on Capitol Hill. House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) even met with the new chief executive of Exxon Mobil, Rex Tillerson -- an encounter one aide described as “not a friendly meeting.”

Fearing a voter backlash, Republican leaders have announced a number of actions they hope will gain them a little time -- and perhaps a little ground -- with constituents.

Boehner said the House would vote today on two hastily assembled bills -- one to make gas price gouging a federal crime and the other to streamline federal approval for building new refineries.

Democrats noted that they had introduced similar anti-gouging legislation last year and that the Republican leadership made no effort to hold hearings on the subject, much less schedule a vote.

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and nearly a year after Democrats introduced price-gouging legislation, we welcome Republicans finally joining our efforts to bring down gas prices,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco).

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), author of the Democratic measure, expressed concern that the Republican version wouldn’t do enough to define gouging, leaving the details to the Federal Trade Commission.

“They don’t want the American people to know what their definition of price gouging is,” Stupak said, noting that the legislation also leaves it to the FTC to define wholesale and retail.

“That way,” he said, “they can hide the costs farther down the chain.”

The second House measure would streamline federal approvals for oil refinery construction. Republicans argue that a tight supply of oil creates sharp price increases when demand shifts and that new refineries are needed to increase domestic supplies.

But Stupak said the bill was misdirected.

“They haven’t applied to build more refineries, nor do they want to,” he said of oil companies. “They have no desire to do that. When supplies are short, they have us over a barrel.”

A senior Republican aide said Hastert made a similar point in his meeting with Exxon Mobil’s Tillerson. The speaker complained that domestic supplies were too tight, the aide said, and Tillerson responded that global supplies were just fine.

“Hastert said that’s the problem, that we’re too dependent on foreign oil,” said the aide, who requested anonymity while discussing what occurred in a private meeting.

In coming weeks, Boehner said, House leaders are planning more energy legislation. He said a bill to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling would be introduced soon, reviving a proposal that over the years has been repeatedly passed by the House and repeatedly defeated by the Senate.

Boehner also said House members would begin drafting a “comprehensive” energy package that he hoped could be voted on in June.

Provisions would include support for developing alternative fuels, suspending rules for use of “boutique” fuels such as ethanol during periods of high prices, and incentives for developing and purchasing hybrid gas-electric and hydrogen-powered vehicles.

Stupak, the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, noted that the House passed a large energy bill last summer and another gas price bill in the fall. The gas legislation was not acted on by the Senate.

“So that would be the fourth energy bill to come to the floor in 18 months,” he said. “We have a saying on the committee: ‘By golly, this is the best energy bill we’ve seen since the last one.’ They [Republicans] have no bold new ideas. The only thing they know how to do is drill in the Arctic wildlife refuge, destroy the environment and give big tax breaks to the oil companies.”

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Times staff writer James Gerstenzang contributed to this report.