A week after saying the nation should wean itself off oil imports, President Bush unveiled a budget that shortchanges the very programs that could get us there. It will be up to Congress to set things on the right path.
In his Jan. 31 State of the Union speech, Bush announced an Advanced Energy Initiative and called for a 22 percent hike in clean energy research at the Department of Energy. But Monday, the White House released a fiscal 2007 budget plan that would gut many related programs and in other cases give the efforts far less than what Congress already agreed to fund.
The Bush budget actually calls for reducing DOE spending by 1.8 percent. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden faces a $10 million cut, dropping its appropriation to about $162 million (compared with $214 million when Bush took office). Two-thirds of the DOE’s budget, or $13.6 billion of $20.7 billion for next year, would go to maintain nuclear weapons and clean up old nuclear sites. Efficiency and renewable energy would compete for remaining funds with other DOE duties. Hydrogen fuel and energy-efficiency research would share $4.1 billion with development of new supercomputers used for weapons research.
Yet Bush plans to boost spending on fossil fuels, including more drilling in the West.
Conservation and efficiency should be higher priorities. For example, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star program has shown consumers and business how to trim energy use and costs, but Bush would slash Energy Star by $4 million.
At least Bush should invest as much money as Congress authorized last summer in conservation and alternative energy. True, the massive energy legislation Congress OK’d in August gave most support to fossil fuels. But some provisions contained the beginnings of a progressive energy policy thanks to an effort led by Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., and New Mexicans Jeff Bingaman, top Democrat on the Senate’s energy committee, and Pete Domenici, the committee’s Republican chairman.
Congress authorized (but hasn’t finished appropriating) $200 million to make ethanol and biodiesel price-competitive with gasoline and diesel refined from crude oil. In last Tuesday’s speech, the president paid lip service to the idea but his budget would provide $50 million less than Congress wanted. While Congress supported geothermal and some new solar technologies, Bush wants to end the research.
There’s an old saw that if you want to know where a man is going you look at his feet, not his mouth. Bush’s budget plan is running in the wrong direction.
