Energy Policy Act of 2003-Conference Report

ENERGY POLICY ACT OF 2003-CONFERENCE REPORT

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I thank Senator Bingaman for a chance to talk for a few minutes now. He has done a tremendous job in terms of advocating so many issues vital to the public, and I thank him for his thoughtfulness letting me begin this debate.

Throughout this discussion, we have been told this legislation should not be looked at in terms of any particular provision, but it should be evaluated on its overall merit. We heard that yesterday. We heard that again today.

We have been told that a conference report, particularly, is part of a give-and-take kind of discussion among various legislators and the various parties. Let me be real clear on that. If we are using the give-and-take measure as a barometer of evaluating an Energy bill, it ought to be clear that on this one, it is the public that is giving, and the powerful and the influential are taking a whole package of goodies.

In my view, if you look at this legislation and its provisions that in effect begin with the "get out of jail free" card that is given to the MTBE producers, and you go on to this grab bag of tax goodies that are given to powerful interests, on every measure this overall legislation breaches the fundamental principles of good energy policy.

Let me begin by talking about how it would affect our dependence on foreign oil. I believe reducing America's dependence on foreign oil is the dipstick for measuring an Energy bill. By that measure, this legislation is more than several quarts low. Thirty years ago the people of this country waited in long lines to fill up their tanks. They dreamed then of the day when the United States would no longer be dependent on foreign oil. Our citizens were asked to hold their thermostats down, and they said: What is going to be done to make this country and our electric supply less dependent on fossil fuels?

We all understand our dependence on foreign oil has increased. Fossil fuels still provide more than 85 percent of all the energy produced in the United States. If you look at this legislation, what it does is it gives, on a virtual 5 to 1 ratio, most of the tax relief to those powerful interests that, in my view, have contributed mightily to the mess that our country is in.

What is needed, of course, is a bold and aggressive approach in terms of clean and renewable energy. That is regrettably sorely lacking in this legislation.

So the Senate is aware exactly of the numbers: Renewable energy in this legislation gets about $3.4 billion over the next 10 years. The combined credits for those involved in fossil fuels comes to well over $15 billion.

I am of the view that when you look at this legislation and the fact that it does virtually nothing in terms of the key areas like transportation to promote conservation and help us find a way to a different energy future. This legislation simply does not meet the need at this time for a fresh approach in energy.

What is so unfortunate about it is, I believe, a new approach on energy is just about the most patriotic thing our country could do. We all understand the role of oil and energy dependence with respect to global security. Yet this legislation is basically a tribute to yesteryear, a hodgepodge of subsidies for the well connected, and these huge energy conglomerates basically would get additional funds for what they are already doing.

We tried over the last couple of days to amend the legislation. On all of the pro-consumer amendments, they were just gunned down almost in a perfunctory manner. The American people were given 2 days to scan 1,100 pages, more than 40 percent of which by some estimates was brand new text that was not in either the House or the Senate bill. Essentially, we have 500 pages of brand new text that had not been seen by either the Senate or the House.

For purposes of this opening discussion, let me talk about some of the areas about which I am particularly concerned.

The people of my part of the country were shellacked by the Enron scams. One of our major utilities used up hundreds of thousands of dollars of scores of workers' retirement accounts. Now these workers have virtually nothing as a result of Enron. The conference report did virtually nothing to deal with the market manipulation that went on in the Enron case-all of the smoking gun memos we read about in the papers for days involving Death Star, the Ricochet tactics that were used to drive up market prices, the energy traders who used schemes such as Get Shorty or use a Fat Boy to manipulate energy markets with impunity.

What this legislation does, in effect, is say we will ban just one of the manipulative practices used in Enron but for everything else you have free rein to manipulate the American consumer. It is sort of like building a 4-inch dam across our mighty Columbia; you stop one relatively small practice, but it is going to be drowned out by all the other manipulative schemes.

In my view, this legislation is an open invitation to future Enrons.

With respect to other priorities about which we felt strongly, I tried, for example, to prevent the weakening of current export controls on highly enriched uranium. It seems astounding that at a time when President Bush correctly talked about how important it is to fight terrorism-and we have all been concerned about yellowcake.

I sit on the Intelligence Committee. Of course, I can't get into what is discussed there. But I don't think anybody in the United States doubts the seriousness of the terrorist threat around the world. Controls in current law are intended to end the dependence of foreign companies on nuclear-bomb-grade materials, but the conference report, incredible as it may seem, goes in just the opposite direction and is going to make it easier for terrorists to traffic in these nuclear-bomb-grade materials.

The conference report would give foreign producers a fresh 9-year holiday on converting highly enriched uranium into the much safer low-enriched uranium, a conversion, in my view, that should have happened years ago. I fought in the conference to keep in place the current export controls on highly enriched uranium. I believe had my amendment passed, it would have empowered President Bush to be able to fulfill his goal of keeping nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists. Unfortunately, this too went down on strictly party lines.

There are other areas with respect to pro-consumer amendments I thought were important which I will discuss briefly.

Many of our parts of the country have been subjected to price spikes in the gasoline market. We saw last summer that many consumers were spending more than $2 a gallon for gas. In parts of the Southwest, it was up to $4 per gallon for gas.

I sought to give the Federal Trade Commission authority to go after documented anti-consumer practices such as redlining and zone pricing. At present, every time there is a price spike, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham most recently put out various kinds of press releases saying they are doing an inquiry into why gasoline prices have spiked up. Just as sure as the night follows the day, the next time there is a price spike we will hear the very same thing from the Secretary of Energy.

The fact is when you look at the statutes on the books, you will find that the Secretary of Energy has absolutely no authority to do anything with respect to skyrocketing gasoline prices.

What I have sought to do in the conference and over the last few months is give the Federal Trade Commission the authority to go after documented anti-competitive practices in markets where you basically have three or possibly four of the oil companies controlling more than 60 percent of the gas that is sold in this area.

Many Members of the Senate represent just those communities-communities where in effect you have seen the competitive marketplace forces sucked right out of the gasoline markets in their communities. Unfortunately, that too was rejected on a straight party line vote.

In addition, I offered an amendment to create an advocate for the energy consumer. I believed that if you were going to have a whole passel of deregulation and regulatory changes, somebody ought to have the authority to stand up for the consumer. The great majority of our States do exactly that. We all understand that the energy markets have changed. Now there is much more being done in terms of interstate trading of energy, and there is nothing the States could do to go after abuses in the interstate trading of wholesale power.

In the conference, I offered an amendment. I made it clear I was willing to work with both Republican chairs, Senator Domenici and Congressman Tauzin, on it. Yet that went nowhere as well despite bipartisan support.
Pat Wood, head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, thought it was "a great idea" to have an advocate-those are his words, not mine-for the consumer. Regrettably, that idea went nowhere as well.

I have talked about what the conference report doesn't do. I want to talk for a few minutes about what it does do. It gives, for example, oil and gas extractors a blanket exemption under the Safe Drinking Water Act from pumping noxious and carcinogenic fluids underground. It gives energy producers immunity from Clean Water Act protection to present contaminated storm water runoff from polluting our lakes, streams, and marshes. It gives $30 million to a whole host of mining interests to pursue direct leaching of radioactive mine tailings into the ground.

In other words, the conference report either explicitly allows or it pays to create America's future Superfund sites.

I have talked about the get-out-of-jail-free card for the MTBE producers. This in effect would allow these producers protection from lawsuits that forced them to clean up the problem they created.

In our State, even Republicans in the State legislature are concerned about not only losing the ability to fund MTBE cleanup in Oregon but they are concerned about the precedent it sets for future cleanup of various other dangerous materials such as perchlorate and TCE.

I think this is part of what concerns me the most. I have always believed that anything important in this town has to be done on a bipartisan basis. It is probably the concern I have that has dominated my career in public service. I think we had an opportunity for a bipartisan bill in this area. As I have been able to do in my home State with our colleague, Senator Smith, I think there was an opportunity for common ground on a whole host of key kinds of cases that would have laid out a vision for a very different energy future. But essentially what you had for weeks and weeks was a blackout. You had energy blackouts last summer with respect to this legislation. Senator Bingaman and I and others who were in the conference faced an information blackout. Any time you go behind closed doors, any time you do something along the lines of a conference in secret, it is an invitation to special interests to exploit their clout and their influence. That is exactly what has happened here.

I will outline one other provision. I know colleagues are waiting, and I am particularly grateful to Senator Bingaman for this chance to take a few minutes at the outset of the debate and touch on the proposal with respect to standard market design.

In our part of the world, in my home state, we have the highest unemployment rate in the country. Reasonable energy prices have been a key to our well-being. What we have now in this legislation is a glidepath to set up something called standard market design, a one-size-fits-all approach with respect to energy regulation.

I come to that view because there are two provisions in the report and they are essentially contradictory in nature. The first part of the conference report says you cannot engage in a standard market design regulatory regime in effect until 2007. The second part says it is basically OK for FERC to do anything they want. At a minimum, we have a lawyer's full employment program as a result of this regulatory limbo. But what is more likely to happen, because of the power of the interests that want the standard market design, they are going to exploit the regulatory confusion in this legislation to work their will.

On September 30th I received a letter from a Republican FERC commissioner, Joseph Kelliher, in which he explicitly told me that standard market design is a bad idea for Oregon, a bad idea for the Pacific Northwest, and should not be implemented in our region.

I say to the people of my State and my region, I am still going to fight this with everything I have.

Finally, at a time when our country can be held hostage by oil-producing nations, we had a chance to go forward with legislation that would make us truly energy independent. At a time when cutting-edge renewable resources are at our fingertips, what this conference report does is it lets these exciting technologies slip through our fingers. At a time when the people of our country have been clamoring for a fresh approach, a different energy future, this conference report looks at energy policy through the rearview mirror. I hope my colleagues will reject this conference report and look forward over the rest of this day and perhaps others to talk about it at some length.

I yield the floor.