Hand-wringing over failure by the US Senate to pass bipartisan energy legislation focuses on the wrong problem. Political pundits mourn the death of bipartisanship and condemn "dysfunction" of the government. In fact, the problem is that a White House with a fuzzy view of constitutional boundaries has seized control of energy policy-making.
The Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act was a collection of modest steps designed to improve the energy-use efficiency of buildings and manufacturing plants. It wouldn't have cost much. Like a companion bill in the House, it received support from members of both major political parties. Enactment probably would have trimmed energy use, a worthy goal. Because the savings would have been marginal, however, failure means little to the energy market. It also means less to politics than most analysts opine.
Fundamentally divided
The nation is fundamentally divided over energy. One side advocates a massive shift away from fossil energy, mainly as a precaution against global warming. The other side considers such a shift impossibly expensive and probably unnecessary. For the political fighting inevitable over such thoroughgoing disagreement, the appropriate arena is Congress. Lately, however, the White House has acted on its own in pursuit of radical change when displeased by legislative outcomes.
A hallmark of this enlargement by the Executive Branch of Executive Branch authority is the Environmental Protection Agency's initiative to regulate greenhouse gas emissions after Congress failed to pass cap-and-trade legislation. Many Americans and their representatives find EPA's power grab more troubling for the nation than, say, the absence of a law on energy use by buildings and manufacturing plants.
In fact, the EPA's regulation of power-plant emissions of CO2 became one of the political wires that tripped the energy bill. Republican senators proposed to amend the bill to limit EPA's authority to redesign power generation. They also offered amendments approving the border crossing of the Keystone XL pipeline, calling for expedited permitting of LNG exports, and resisting the imposition of a carbon tax.
Politics? Of course. What's wrong with that?
The Obama administration has steered the US toward an energy future defined by environmental extremism, incompatible with mainline economic interests, and opposed by many Americans. Like the EPA's constriction of electricity from coal, the president's temporizing on Keystone XL fits his stated campaign against "carbon pollution"—meaning energy from hydrocarbons. That campaign at least partly explains the reluctance to allow exports of LNG and fosters an institutional bias in support of anything that hikes prices of fossil energy, such as a carbon tax.
Sensible lawmakers see economic peril in a program sure to raise energy costs. Many such lawmakers exist. But they have been forced to take the fight to an overly active White House supported by Democratic leaders who won't let it happen on Capitol Hill.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) prevented votes on amendments to the energy bill. He said he'd allow a stand-alone vote on Keystone XL only if the energy bill advanced without change. The bill died May 12 when a procedural measure didn't receive 60 votes allowing a final vote. Reid and Democratic allies complained of Republican obstructionism. In fact, he was guarding the president's flank. Now Obama has no need to veto an energy-savings bill because it contained amendments, such as Keystone XL approval, intolerable to environmental groups. And he doesn't have to veto a stand-alone Keystone XL bill supported by some Democrats.
White House targeted
Yes, Republicans were targeting the White House with their amendments. That's where energy mistakes increasingly develop, so that's where energy mistakes must be resisted. Lawmakers who find those circumstances uncomfortable should challenge an administration that has usurped their authority.
While administration officials fashion answers to historic energy questions, including access to transformative oil supply in Canada and coal's future in power generation, lawmakers act like failure of a piddling conservation bill threatens the republic. The absence of proportion is striking. Congress should do something about it.