WATCHING WASHINGTON THE AGENDA UNDER CLINTON

With Patrick Crow The U.S. oil industry can expect to be largely ignored when Bill Clinton is inaugurated president and the 103rd Congress is seated in January. The elections have left Democrats in firm control of Congress. The Senate will have 56 Democrats and 42 Republicans, with a Georgia seat to be filled Nov. 24 and a North Dakota seat Dec. 4 in special elections. The House of Representatives will have 259 Democrats, 175 Republicans, and one independent.

Nov. 16, 1992

3 min read

The U.S. oil industry can expect to be largely ignored when Bill Clinton is inaugurated president and the 103rd Congress is seated in January.

The elections have left Democrats in firm control of Congress.

The Senate will have 56 Democrats and 42 Republicans, with a Georgia seat to be filled Nov. 24 and a North Dakota seat Dec. 4 in special elections. The House of Representatives will have 259 Democrats, 175 Republicans, and one independent.

Voters did not turn against incumbents as strongly as expected. Only 24 incumbents were defeated, and 79 of the 110 freshmen elected had previously held elective office.

LITTLE ENERGY ACTION

The next Congress should not affect energy legislation much. The chairmen of all energy related committees were reelected, and they control the agenda.

The greatest change will occur in the House energy and commerce committee, where one third of the seats were vacated and Carlos Moorhead (R-Calif.) rose to become the senior Republican.

Assuming there are no oil or gas shortages this winter, energy won't be discussed very much in the first year of the Clinton administration.

The Clinton team will focus on issues that dominated the campaign: the economy, health care, education, rebuilding transportation infrastructure, and the like.

Clinton is working on an economic agenda for early 1993. Any energy policy changes will be discussed only as subissues of economic or environmental policies.

The administration will treat the natural gas industry kindly because it is the environmentally preferred fuel.

It may be hard on the refining industry. The new administration will seek a 40 mpg standard for new autos and could rigidly implement the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments.

And it is likely to ignore the producing industry, as the Bush administration did, leaving prices to the marketplace and not expanding offshore drilling.

Action may be the defining word for the administration's first year. Clinton is a consensus builder supported by a majority of Congress. He should get relatively quick action on his bills, particularly economic ones.

On its own, Congress will consider some miscellaneous energy bills, but it pretty well swept the decks clean with the Comprehensive National Energy Policy Act last year.

NEW ADMINISTRATORS

Of course, the people Clinton selects to implement his policies will be as important as the policies themselves.

Three fifths of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission could change. Chairman Martin Allday, a Republican, could serve out his term until October 1993 but is likely to resign. Clinton also will fill the seats of Democrat Jerry Langdon and Republican Charles Trabandt. Their terms expired in October but they continue to serve until replaced.

From the oil industry's standpoint, other key appointments will be the Energy and Interior secretaries and the Environmental Protection Agency administrator.

There is a lot of speculation about who is in the running for what. All that's sure is that Clinton plans to name his cabinet much earlier than most presidents do.