Oil Independence Bills Gain Some Momentum in U.S.

NY Journal News
July 11, 2006

WASHINGTON — With voters clamoring for relief from sky-high gas prices and facing long waits to buy hybrid cars, bipartisan legislation to increase production of fuel-efficient vehicles and alternative fuels is gaining momentum.

More than a quarter of the Senate, including five potential presidential candidates, and 84 House members are pushing for a vote on "vehicle and fuel choice" measures that are supported by an unusual alliance of conservative and liberal groups.

Senate sponsors, including Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., Evan Bayh, D-Ind., and Sam Brownback, R-Kan., vow to force a vote on their plan, preferably as part of one on a broader energy bill that may deal with allegations of gasoline price gouging. Altogether, 28 senators support the bill.

House sponsors — Rep. Eliot Engel, a veteran Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Georgia Rep. Jack Kingston, a junior GOP leader — hope to do the same on a companion bill should House Republican leaders also try to move emergency energy legislation this month. They are willing to consider a compromise to overcome objections of automakers and oil companies.

"The ball is in the Republicans' court," said Engel, a Bronx resident whose district stretches into Westchester and Rockland counties. "They have the power to move this bill. It is bipartisan and it is not a bill looking for political advantage of one party over the other. This is precisely the kind of thing that the American people want to see."

The alternative fuel and vehicle bills would do little to immediately reduce gas prices that average around $3 a gallon for regular gasoline across the nation. Instead, they set goals for reducing U.S. consumption of foreign oil by half by 2025. Any long-term reduction in the skyrocketing demand for oil globally could ease pressure on prices.

The bills offer an array of government loans, subsidies and tax breaks for automakers that retool factories to build more fuel-efficient cars, such as gas-electric hybrids. Incentives to promote development of alternative fuels, such as ethanol, and help consumers buy more fuel-efficient cars are increased beyond the help provided by the massive energy bill signed into law last year.

The House bill requires that 80 percent of cars manufactured in 2012 be flexible-fuel vehicles. The Senate version would require only 10 percent by then and bumps it up to 50 percent in 2016.

Energy experts say there is considerable pressure on Congress to pass some kind of energy legislation before the November election. The key question is whether Congress has enough time before its August recess to bring it up and then deal with scores of amendments on the Senate floor.

But Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., is pushing ahead, asking committee chairmen to move recommendations from the GOP's "energy working group" by mid-July.

The fuel-choices bills reflect proposals of the Set America Free Coalition, a group composed of conservative-leaning military hawks from the Reagan and first Bush administrations, social conservatives, environmentalists and the labor movement.

Gov. George Pataki, a Republican with strong environmental credentials and — like Clinton and Frist — a possible presidential candidate in 2008, recently endorsed the bill and urged the entire New York congressional delegation to get behind it. So far, only Clinton and eight members of the New York House delegation, including Reps. Sue Kelly, R-Katonah, and Nita Lowey, D-Harrison, have signed on as co-sponsors.

"The politics of the issue seem pretty well aligned," said Paul Bledsoe, spokesman for the bipartisan National Commission on Energy Policy.

Kingston, who wields some clout as vice chairman of the House Republican Conference, the primary forum for communicating the party's message to members, said the fuel-choices bills were running into roadblocks even as they continued to attract co-sponsors.

For example, lawmakers from Michigan, as home to the U.S. auto industry, oppose a tax credit for accelerating production of flex-fuel cars or gas-electric hybrids. They fear it would increase the lead that Toyota and other foreign companies already have over American companies in alternative-fuel cars.

The Big Three automakers — General Motors, Ford and DaimlerChrysler — announced late last month plans to double their production of flex-fuel vehicles that can use E-85 ethanol or biodiesel by 2010. That would mean that 20 percent of cars built by them that year would be capable of running on alternative fuels.

To do more in a short period of time, as required by the fuel choices bills, could prevent domestic automakers from picking the right technology for alternative fuel cars, GM officials said.

"We cannot support mandates that are not founded on sound science, because they can have a catastrophic economic effect on industry," said Greg Martin, director of policy and communications in GM's Washington office.

But Kingston and others want a faster pace.

American automakers "are going 30 miles an hour whereas we want them to go 60 miles an hour and Toyota and Honda are already going 50 or 60 miles per hour," Kingston said.

Recent polls show that the American public is increasingly interested in buying fuel-efficient cars. A CNN poll in early May found that 60 percent of adults had thought seriously about purchasing such vehicles as a result of rising gas prices.

"People are angry, but they are adjusting," said Mantel Williams, spokesman for the American Automobile Club. "Whenever (automakers) put a hybrid on the market, there is a waiting list for it. There is a lot of interest in buying and shopping green. The bills are headed in the right direction."