Nick Snow
Washington Correspondent
WASHINGTON, DC, Mar. 15 -- Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) has introduced an amendment to the federal budget resolution that assumes reauthorization of the chemical and toxic waste Superfund tax to help restore federal energy programs that the administration of President George W. Bush wants to cut. The amendment, however, was defeated by a 46-54 vote.
Noting that Congress passed the first comprehensive energy legislation in 13 years in 2005, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee's chief minority member said: "If we finally have a new energy strategy for the 21st century then where is the funding to implement this new strategy?"
He said the administration's fiscal 2007 budget request for the Department of Energy "basically treads water" with a few programs expanded and others contracted or eliminated.
"Instead of a broad and comprehensive effort to implement the Energy Policy Act of 2005, we have a cherry-picking, zero-sum strategy in the budget request. That is something that none of us voted for," he said.
The resolution from the Budget Committee, which the full Senate is debating this week, also contains an energy policy that Bingaman termed "dead in the water."
In Function 270 of the resolution, which deals with energy, he said, discretionary spending would fall from $3.84 billion in the current fiscal year to $3.83 billion in fiscal 2007. "In fact, projected spending on energy in 4 out of the next 5 fiscal years in the budget resolution is less than what we are doing today," he said.
Bingaman said his amendment would increase totals within Function 270 by $3.549 billion to correspond to programs and funding that Congress put in place last year. Most of that amount, $2.818 billion, would be for renewable energy programs. Another $1.17 billion would be for equipment and building energy efficiency efforts, while $629 million would go to transportation vehicle improvements.
A fourth section would add $1.044 billion for "secure, affordable, and clean energy," including $64 million for domestic oil and gas research and development. Bingaman termed the proposal to terminate these programs "one of the most glaring errors" in the energy budget request.
"When you realize that most of the DOE program being terminated is focused on helping independent oil and gas producers, and not the major oil companies, it's even harder to understand," he said.
"There are a lot of small oil and gas producers in my state, and they certainly are benefiting from current high prices. But none of them are in a position to start up R&D departments. And oil and gas is a boom-and-bust business, while R&D is something you need to have a long-term commitment to in order to achieve results," Bingaman said.
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