Congress scored abysmally low approval ratings in recent polls. It's not hard to see why. Neither lawmakers nor the Bush administration is focused on the problems people care most about.And when Congress does take up an important national topic, the legislation quickly becomes larded with favors to every special interest in Washington, tucked away in some massive, indecipherable bill.
So it is with energy policy, which the Senate began considering last week. Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley is helping make the Senate version superior to a version passed earlier by the House, but it remains an open question whether the final bill will be better than having no bill at all. The times demand an unwavering national commitment to achieving energy independence. This hodgepodge isn't it.
President Bush has been trying to get Congress to pass a so-called energy bill for three years - legislation that was hatched by Vice President Dick Cheney after secret meetings with energy-industry lobbyists. It's called an energy policy, but it's little more than a grab-bag of tax goodies for various segments of the energy industry.Then there are irrelevant provisions, such as shielding the makers of the gasoline additive MTBE from liability for harm caused by their poisonous product. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas is reported to have vowed the legislation will not pass without that provision, providing protection for the oil companies. So much for putting the national interest ahead of special interests.
The test of whether the legislation can fairly be said to establish a national energy policy is whether the policy is clearly understood and the legislation is focused single-mindedly on its goal. Instead, this legislation is ill-defined, scattering tax incentives hither and yon. It has conflicting purposes of encouraging use of alternative fuels while at the same time expanding the consumption of traditional fuels.
Grassley, as head of the Senate Finance Committee, has shaped the tax provisions in the Senate version of the bill, and his committee has at least improved the focus. The Senate version would provide $16 billion in tax breaks over 10 years, many of them intended to encourage conservation and alternative fuels.
Alternative energy production in Iowa - including ethanol, wind, biomass and energy from manure - stands to benefit.
Still, some of the provisions aren't new. They merely extend existing tax credits. Moreover, it's doubtful that tax credits - especially those scattered widely - are an effective use of public funds.
They will add several more pages of complexity to the tax code at a time when the administration's next big initiative is supposed to be tax simplification. Go figure.
If the goal is U.S. energy independence, the $16 billion could be more effectively spent by concentrating it in a Manhattan Project-type national effort to achieve breakthroughs in promising alternative fuels.
That should be coupled with efforts to cut back on petroleum consumption until the day comes when the nation's motorists can be free of it. The most effective conservation measure would be a market-driven one - a steep tax on gasoline and gas-guzzling vehicles. That would not only encourage more fuel efficiency and less driving-intensive lifestyles, but also provide revenue to cut federal deficits and pay for research into energy alternatives.
An energy tax would be unpopular among motorists already burdened by record gas prices, but as a policy tool for achieving energy independence, it would make far more sense than sprinkling tax favors among the energy lobbyists.
Passing a bunch of tax breaks and calling the result an energy policy doesn't make it so.
