Press Conference on the Energy Bill

Federal News Service

HEADLINE: PRESS CONFERENCE WITH SENATOR BYRON DORGAN (D-ND); SENATOR RON WYDEN (D-OR); REPRESENTATIVE EDWARD MARKEY (D-MA); AND REPRESENTATIVE HENRY WAXMAN (D-CA)
 
TOPIC: THE ENERGY BILL

BODY:
SEN. DORGAN: I'm Byron Dorgan from North Dakota, and I'm joined by my colleagues, who will say a few words.

We are conferees on the energy conference. Actually, we have all been duly certified by the U.S. House and U.S. Senate as conferees. We're still pretty fresh, however. We've not actually been worked very hard on this conference, because we've been prevented from attending any conferences, because there has actually not been any conferences. So all the terms that have been used about conferences have been really inaccurate terms. There have been Republican meetings all along to talk about the energy bill, but no conferences. And we regret that because we think that injures the opportunity to get an energy bill.

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Let me call on my colleague, Senator Wyden.

SEN. WYDEN: Well, I think Senator Dorgan has really spoken for all of us. And let me just give you a couple of additional points.

I think everybody understands that the whole debate about energy with this administration began with this secret task force, this secret task force on energy. And I'm of the view that the Republican conference meetings look like a bad summer sequel that you would call "Secret Energy Task Force Part II."

And the fact is, we have been in the dark throughout this process. I am continually asked whether there's going to be a filibuster in the Senate over the bill. Let me make—be very clear. There will definitely be a filibuster in the Senate over a bad energy bill, there's just no question about that. And as Senator Dorgan just touched on, in critical kinds of areas, such as energy manipulation, we are totally in the dark.

My part of the country, the Pacific Northwest, has been clobbered by energy manipulation. We laid out in hearings in the Commerce Committee, for example, these smoking-gun memos that document how the energy markets were manipulated in the Pacific Northwest and up and down the West Coast. And so we must have the details with respect to those issues.

So this is going to, I think, be THE consumer issue over the next few months here in the United States Senate. You look at what's happening with natural gas prices, for example. In my state, with the highest unemployment rate in the country, this is THE issue with respect to consumers, with respect to the well-being of businesses.

And we are going to continue to do everything we can to be constructive. At one point, Senator Dorgan said maybe WE ought to organize the meetings and invite THEM. I mean, that's not exactly your garden-variety way to approach these kinds of discussions, but we want to make it clear we're going to do everything possible to be constructive. But I also want to make it clear that if there is an effort to railroad a lousy bill through the United States Senate that sticks it to the consumers, there is going to be a filibuster of a bad bill in the United States Senate.

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SEN. DORGAN: Well, look, if on top of the process we've seen for the past couple of months, they decide there will not even be a conference, in my judgment, at that point there will not be an energy bill.

We have been promised here in the Senate—I can only speak for the Senate. We have been promised in the Senate repeatedly by Senator Domenici that we will have an opportunity to offer amendments at some point in this process. I expect that promise will be kept.

SEN. WYDEN: Let me add to that point, though. There are a lot of ways in which you can work together and try to find common ground if you're committed to it. For example, Senator Feinstein and I yesterday suggested on the forestry bill—another contentious area, where we got 80 votes in the Senate—"Look, we're willing to meet anywhere, anytime, in order to have these discussions."

So what Senator Dorgan has said is, you know, we've got a conference under way here now, we are ready, willing and able to meet them more than halfway. But if you want to stiff people because you control all the branches of government—you've got the White House, the Senate and the House—you've got a right to do it. And that's why we're saying, even though it's our first choice to try to find common ground and get a bill, we are prepared to defend the American people and say if it's a lousy bill, if it's a bill that is detrimental to the interests of millions of Americans, there will be a filibuster over a bad bill.

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Q Senator Wyden, fellow senators were just in this gallery, saying that the—extending the Internet tax moratorium is basically a big giveaway to the telecom industry and an unfunded mandate -- (off mike).

SEN. WYDEN: Let me just give you a quickie and then we can finish this one. Look, the same arguments are being made today as were made seven years ago: that this was going strip the states of the revenue that they need and it was a giveaway to special interests. None of that has been borne out. In fact, what I'm going to do when we go to the floor is sort of outline all of these doomsday statements that have been made over the last seven years. And I think we ought to let everybody finish.

Byron Dorgan is just about my best friend on the planet. This is the only subject around which we disagree.

So you probably don't want to have the two of us in a debate when everybody wants to finish on energy.

SEN. DORGAN: I'll manage the bill on our side when we get to the floor, so listen up, would you?

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Q (Off mike) -- when they might show you the bill?

SEN. DORGAN: I don't have any idea.

SEN. WYDEN: But I think the other point with your question is the Senate showed a few days ago how you can get 80 votes on an issue where there was gridlock for more than five years, the forestry question. People worked on both sides of the aisle and came up with an enormous vote, a vote that nobody could have dreamed of. So, what Senator Dorgan is talking about is there is an opportunity to get a very significant plurality of conferees, a bipartisan bill, but you've got to show some evidence that you're serious about wanting to do it.

SEN. DORGAN: Thank you all.