April 21, 2005
JUST ANOTHER MAJOR REFORM...:
Soft vs. hard energy path: the political lines harden: House was set to pass a bill Thursday that supporters say will boost supplies, but critics worry about smog and ANWR. (Brad Knickerbocker, 4/22/05, The Christian Science Monitor)
In Washington this week, President Bush and lawmakers of both parties are pushing their energy agendas. Mr. Bush, who began developing his still-languishing energy strategy shortly after he took office in 2001, prodded Congress to "get a bill to my desk before the summer recess."The measure debated before the full House of Representatives Wednesday and Thursday - with passage expected Thursday afternoon - contains much of what Bush wants. But critics say it's also filled with unnecessary subsidies, over-reliance on nonrenewable resources like oil and coal, and an overall philosophy that even Energy Department economic analysts say won't significantly reduce dependence on foreign oil or affect the price at the pump.
The road to a new comprehensive energy program has been a long, hard slog.
"Traditionally, energy legislation has been contentious, and, in fact, major energy legislation has not been passed since 1992," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said this week in an online White House forum.
The President never aims low, does he? Posted by Orrin Judd at April 21, 2005 6:01 PM
"The President never aims low, does he?"
And he'll spend as much political capital on getting this through the Senate as he has fighting for Miguel Estrada, Janice Rogers Brown, John Bolton, etc...
Posted by: b at April 21, 2005 6:52 PMHe doesn't have too -- the Democrats have too many balls in the air right now. You can't have the whole party on Code Red about Tom DeLay and on Code Red about judicial nominations and on Code Yellow about Social Security while at the same time having your supporters fuming about the selection of a conservative pope and expect to gin up any sort of fire in opposing an energy bill.
It also strains the networks' capacity to get the Democrats' complaints into one of their start of the broadcast spots where they can rue this action as the end of civilization, and the major dailies only have so much space for big Page 1 headlines. Move the energy bill to the forefront, and they have to bump one of the others to the inside, where the other pages newsprint on top of it tend to muffle the moral outrage.
Posted by: John at April 21, 2005 9:14 PMkeep in mind with gwb, the real play is never where the gorilla dust is. he will wrap back around and pick up the judicial issue after the big play has already been made elsewhere. tinkers, to evans to chance -- in the really big leaques. silly democrats, tricks are for kids.
Posted by: cjm at April 21, 2005 10:43 PMPres. Bush keeps throwing policy initiatives into Congress. This is good for him and not for his political opponents. All they do is carp and complain and try to block without actually coming up with any ideas of their own. At some point, in the darn near future, they will be seen as merely obstructionist, not a good thing to be seen as (ask Tom Daschel). All of these polcy initiatives of the President are supported by some part of the US population, and in the next election the obstructionism of the Democraats in Congress are going to be brought home to their districts,
again.
Fill the air with policies and let the Democrats oppose them all, and seem petty. Let them pass some to avoid that and they anger their own base. Either way President Bush wins some and sets the Democratic congressmen up to get thwacked in '06 with charges of obstruction for the sake of obstruction.
Posted by: Mikey at April 22, 2005 8:35 AM[O]ver-reliance on nonrenewable resources like oil and coal
While coal is technically a nonrenewable resource, for the purposes of the next couple of decades there's a limitless supply, and it comes without all of the military and political risk of the Middle East.
Posted by: J. Tiberius K. at April 23, 2005 5:37 AM