The proposed Senate Republican $100 rebate to compensate for high gas prices, it quickly turned out, was the legislative equivalent of the one stop-light small town: If you blinked, you missed it. That light is already out.
It is just as well. Some things are best forgotten. Except, in this case, the blunder is a reminder of how panicky and out of touch the ruling political majority is these days in the marble corridors of power.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s once-loyal troops deserted him on this one so fast he had no time to develop any public-relations spin. His House counterpart, Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, was among the first out of the door.
OK, so the voters won one. They overwhelmingly thought the idea patronizing and stupidly pandering.
Stripped of that cosmetic gesture, the politicians are still left with a largely unaddressed oil price crisis on their hands. So now our elected representatives are calling for new standards to raise vehicle fuel mileage standards. President Bush has joined the chorus, although he previously demonstrated no interest in the issue.
But shifting the political emphasis to fuel standards has one great charm – nobody has to talk about taxes, the great partisan dividing line. Just last year, Bush signed a highly touted bill that gave the energy industry $15 billion in tax relief. With industry profits and executive compensation going through the roof, some members of Congress – mostly Democrats, but not all – are hollering for a windfall profits tax to repeal at least some of those tax breaks. But others are arguing that gas-tax increases, not cuts, are the only way to keep prices high and force consumers to cut back consumption.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., doing his nearly perfected presidential straddle, complained of the obscene profits of the five major oil companies but ducked the question of what to do about it. There is no mystery why he didn’t live up to his famous straight- talking maverick reputation. The oil industry is a key GOP campaign donor and both the president and Vice President Cheney got rich in the oil industry. The industry’s political action committees gave more than $1 million to mostly GOP federal candidates in the past 15 months, according to PoliticalMoneyLine, a finanical website.
“Outside of satanic cults, these people have the worst PR of anybody in the world,” McCain said. This is a familiar Bush technique: blame sticky problems on faulty communications, not on the horrid policy decisions being communicated. The oil industry, in fact, works hard to put a pleasant, selfless face on troublesomely greedy facts. The American Petroleum Institute has spent more than $20 million over the last few months whining about the laws of supply and demand and the innocent role of the big oil barons.
The Senate Finance Committee has demanded that the top 15 oil companies turn over their tax returns. The chairman, Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has called for some oil profits to be spent helping finance the low-income home heating program.
President Bush has never supported that program, important mostly in northern Democratic-inclined states, and the oil industry has rejected the concept of being forced to share that particular pain. It wouldn’t be all that big a deal but it would be symbolically nice.
So back to fuel mileage standards. Requirements for cars haven’t been raised since President Clinton’s first term, and the rules for various vehicle categories are confusing. Ten state attorneys general have filed suit demanding the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration change the rules immediately. Even so, it would still take years before an ample supply of affordable fuel-efficient models could be on the market.
But having failed to anticipate the crisis, delay in reaction will only make things worse. Republicans are making a feeble attempt to blame Democrats on the grounds that in deference to environmental concerns they prevented drilling on coastal areas and in Alaska. Baloney. The GOP controls Congress and the White House; it was up to them to rally enough bipartisan support for those offensive ideas. And have they forgotten it was Gov. Jeb Bush, you-know-who’s brother, who fought new drilling off Florida’s coast?
There is, of course, no decent short- range solution. President Bush cannot play at being Bolivia and nationalize the oil industry. Thank goodness. But he can be faulted for failing to anticipate that growing global consumption – and his own catering to oil industry greed – would create a financial monster. Once again, the president has shown he’s either a bad “decider” – or not much of a decider at all.
