Opinion and Commentary

The most charitable thing that newspaper editorials are saying about the 2005 Energy Bill is that it "could have been worse."

The President signed the bill in New Mexico, where the Albuquerque Tribune says that the bill is "good only for Texas contingent."

All the hoopla aside, the energy bill that President Bush will sign Monday in Albuquerque is another sucker punch to American consumers and taxpayers...

Let's be brutally honest: Compared with the rest of the world, Americans are energy hogs. Unfortunately, once again it was demonstrated that American politicians can't seem to bite the energy diversification, conservation and renewable bullet - never mind record prices for gasoline, skyrocketing oil company profits or another devastating war in the Middle East. Eventually, that bullet is going to wound us all.

Early estimates of the complex and convoluted bill by watchdog groups - such as the U.S. Public Interest Research Group or Friends of the Earth - suggest that more than $20 billion in public subsidies or tax incentives will go to conventional energy sources, while renewable and alternative sources will get just $5.3 billion.

Even the comparatively conservative National Center of Policy Analysis' energy-team scholars found "special interests" drove the legislation. One member said that rather than being signed Monday in an unusual ceremony at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, Bush should have vetoed it. Center senior fellow Rob Bradley concluded that the bill "represents a transfer of wealth from taxpayers to energy producers."

Even The Street notes that the bill does nothing to reduce US consumption of oil:

According to the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, the final bill that was hammered out between the House and Senate would see U.S. oil demand rise from 20.5 million barrels a day today to 26 million barrels a day by 2020. Several provisions that would have kept consumption to 25 million barrels a day by 2020 died in the joint conference.

And in the President's own backyard, the Waco Tribune Herald writes:

People who look for flaws in the nation's new national energy legislation that Bush signed yesterday will have no trouble finding them.

The Indianapolis Star recognizes that one of its core constituents may benefit, but that doesn't mean a benefit to the nation as a whole:

Indiana corn farmers may benefit from its ethanol requirements, but there's nothing in the bill to help usher in an era of fuel-cell powered vehicles, fusion or solar power. Concern about greenhouse gases that may be affecting the climate is met with silence. So is the vexing problem of handling nuclear waste.

The bill contains plenty of incentives to drill for oil, but few to conserve it. And House negotiators stripped out sensible provisions in the Senate version requiring greater use of renewable energy and conservation.

In short, this national energy policy is business as usual. It puts off confronting the most difficult issues facing the nation.

Down in Florida, the St. Pete Times laments:

Given the time and fuss Congress put into writing a national energy policy, Americans might have expected a more energetic plan. The 1,700-page bill passed Friday does little to address the two most pressing problems: high gasoline prices and dependence on foreign oil.

The New London (CT) Day (also Minneapolis Star Tribune - both require registration) notes that there is "some good amid all the drek." For example:

Where Congress just a few years ago gave incentive tax breaks to some buyers of gasoline-swilling Hummers — an act foolish even by congessional standards — now the buyers of hybrid and other fuel-efficient cars will get a break.

Nevertheless, there's the niggle of reduced auto mileage standards:

Bill Clinton had an admirable environmental record otherwise — much of it since undermined or rolled back by Bush, who seems to look on nature as a pest — but even Clinton shied from the mileage option.

Is gasoline mileage somehow the new third rail of politics that no elected official dare touch? How can that be? Its avoidance sticks out as a gaudy irrationality.

This is very much an energy bill in the president's image. In its heart of hearts it is yet another tax-cut bill and into the bargain it exempts energy companies from some environmental laws — the Safe Drinking Water Act, in one instance — and cuts the companies short cuts through others.