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Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
The House majority leader has become the public face of a polluter-friendly provision of the president's energy plan, threatening its long-term prospects.
Apr 21, 2005 | Methyl tertiary-butyl ether, designed as a clean-air additive for fuel, has turned out to be fairly nasty stuff. Just a few drops of MTBE, as it's known, can make a water supply unusable. In larger concentrations, scientists say, it causes cancer. The chemical, in widespread use for decades, has been detected in nearly 2,000 water systems in 29 states, and that number is still rising. Although the companies involved -- including some of nation's largest oil refineries and suppliers -- have known for more than 20 years that MTBE was fouling waterways, they've been reluctant to get involved in the cleanup and are facing mounting litigation from affected communities.
Now these four little letters are absolutely guaranteed to raise the Bush administration's collective blood pressure as it tries to get an energy bill through Congress. But the MTBE threat the administration is most concerned with isn't environmental; it's political. Once before, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's dogged determination to protect MTBE producers from legal jeopardy dragged the administration's entire energy plan down to defeat. And he's at it again.
A lot has changed since late 2003, the last time the Bush energy bill failed to make it through Congress. Gas prices have hit new highs -- prices have soared 80 percent since Bush first introduced his energy plan -- and the president's approval ratings have slid to new lows. A Gallup Poll earlier this month found that more Americans think the federal government needs to act immediately to lower gas prices (44 percent) than move on Social Security (37 percent), the president's top priority. No wonder the president feels a new urgency on energy legislation: "I wish I could simply wave a magic wand and lower gas prices tomorrow," Bush said on Wednesday.
The political sands may be shifting for Bush, but the one Washington constant is still Tom DeLay. For all the charges he's faced, DeLay has never been accused of a lack of consistency. Last week, he managed to add the same lawsuit-immunity provision to the House energy bill that torpedoed the energy bill's Senate chances last time around. And Tuesday night, he rebuffed the final frantic Democratic efforts to separate the measure from the main energy legislation, expected to pass the House as soon as Thursday.
But while DeLay's allegiance to MTBE producers may not have changed, the atmosphere around him has been undeniably transformed in recent months -- even Republicans on the House Ethics Committee now say they are ready for an investigation. DeLay's hardly the only big-time Republican to back MTBE liability immunity -- House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Joe Barton, who's received around $750,000 from energy interests over the past decade, has also been a strong proponent of the measure -- but since last week's power play, the majority leader has become the public face of MTBE legal immunity, to the delight of Democrats and environmental groups.
Now that every move of the man from Sugar Land comes under a white-hot media spotlight, reporters have predictably spent the past few days scrutinizing the congressman's tangle of ties to oil companies and others who'd be spared legal jeopardy thanks to the provision. ("DeLay at Center of the Energy Debate" read one recent AP headline.) The energy bill's foes are scrambling to take advantage of the new reality around the majority leader. It's an association that pains the White House, but "to the public, this is becoming Tom DeLay's bill," admits a grim GOP congressional staffer.
"Last time, we were out front in identifying MTBE very aggressively as DeLay's measure. And we had some success," says Environmental Working Group Action Fund president Ken Cook. "The difference now is, the rest of the context is filled in: his junkets, the other corruption allegations." He adds, "There's kind of an odor around him this time, a willingness to believe things about Mr. DeLay and the lengths to which he's willing to go that is much stronger than was there before."
Democrats on the Hill predict the majority leader's woes may take a toll on the measure's long-term prospects. "He's still powerful, but people may not be as willing to take the hit for him the way they were two years ago," says a Democratic House committee staffer familiar with the legislation. "We're not talking fringe groups bringing these lawsuits here; we're talking the state of New Hampshire. Now people have to think: 'Am I willing to overlook a case by my school board, by the local water supplier, for Tom DeLay?' Some members still are, but it's becoming a harder sell."
And whether the DeLay controversy will further damage the bill's chances in the Senate, where the MTBE measure sank the bill last time, remains a very real question. Several Northeast Republicans, particularly New England senators such as John Sununu and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire (where MTBE was an issue during last year's presidential primary) have already signaled their unwillingness to support any measure that includes MTBE liability protection when the Senate takes up the measure next month. And Senate Energy Committee chairman Pete Domenici has made it clear the House will have to find a compromise on the issue, or the bill won't survive.
Of course, MTBE and Tom DeLay are hardly the only issues dogging the president's energy legislation. A provision inserted into the bill's "miscellaneous" section could mean the most drastic Clean Air Act changes since his father's administration. The measure, a favorite of groups like the National Association of Manufacturers, would free states from Clean Air Act requirements if some of their pollution comes from other heavily polluted areas located "upwind" until those areas had cleaned up their act. Outraged Democrats point out that nearly every state is "downwind" from somewhere else, and say this amounts to a repeal of federal air pollution requirements.
Meanwhile, the measure's growing tally of tax breaks for energy producers -- introduced at a time of sky-high oil prices -- is drawing scrutiny from press and politicians both. A new report by Taxpayers for Common Sense, one of several fiscal watchdog groups to announce their opposition to the energy bill this week, found the measure's cost this session had mushroomed by $35 billion in the three weeks since it was introduced, to the tune of a staggering $88.9 billion in tax breaks and industry subsidies over the next decade.
