1115.org

As you might have heard, the House and the Senate are close to agreeing on long-stalled energy legislation, a move that can’t come a moment too soon in this era of $60-a-barrel oil, global warming and overloaded power grids. At least that’s the theory behind the energy bill, and the happy-face talking points that are sure to follow will paint the legislation as a bold step toward a new era in American energy production and use. But to see the real face of America’s energy future, one needs to look no farther than Tom DeLay, who has been a keeping a low profile as of late with all the attention given to Karl Rove and Duke Cunningham. But never forget that, when it comes to ethically-challenged politicians, The Hammer remains a Jedi Master.

As Think Progress recently reported, DeLay managed to covertly insert a $1.5 billion addition into the House version of the bill after the legislation was closed to further amendment, because someone like the Bugman is just too important to be hamstrung by that “democratic process” nonsense. The addition, which might have passed completely unnoticed if not for Rep. Henry Waxman, uses the $1.5 billion to set up a fund to theoretically research the extraction of “ultra-deepwater and unconventional natural gas”, which will be largely administrated by a private consortium (with little to no congressional oversight) made up of big players in the oil industry, located conveniently in DeLay’s home district of Sugar Land, Texas. As Waxman notes in his letter (pdf) to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert:

In short, the subtitle provides that taxpayers will hire a private consortium controlled by the oil and gas industry to hand out over $1 billion to oil and gas companies.

Shameless. While DeLay’s sneaky little maneuver is certainly the most egregious example of misappropriation, a quick look at the rest of the proposed legislation shows an energy policy that does very little to actually solve the energy problems we are now facing. Will the energy bill reduce our dependence on foreign oil, or drive down the cost of gasoline? Not really. Will it require auto manufacturers to make more fuel-efficient vehicles? Nope. Will it reduce energy consumption or provide measures to deal with global warming? Sorry. But on the bright side, it does include an estimated $11 billion in tax breaks for energy producers who, in many cases, are already making record profits:

Mr. Barton estimated the overall cost of the measure in direct spending would be in the range of $10 billion to $12 billion, which he said was acceptable to the administration. But the group Taxpayers for Common Sense said its analysis showed there was a potential $80 billion in spending in the bill, though most of the projects would have to win separate Congressional approval.

Much of the criticism of the legislation was tied to the billions of dollars that would flow to energy producers through tax breaks, relief from federal oil and gas royalties, grants for research into new ways to extract hard-to-reach deposits, loan guarantees and other financial aid

It’s kind of sad when we basically have to pay our own industries to be innovative. It’s even more sad that the country’s energy policy focuses more on giveaways and pork than actual solutions. For months, influential politicians like President George Bush and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist have stressed the importance of reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil, painting the issue as both a “foreign tax on the American Dream” and a threat to America’s security. But both of them will gladly sign off on a bill that does almost nothing to change the situation; in fact, the White House opposed a provision in the bill that would require the country to reduce oil consumption by a million barrels (or 5% of what is normally used) by 2015. Instead, the bill’s backers will point to the huge ethenol subsidies (which are estimated to reduce oil consumption by—hold on to your hats— .8% by 2012, if the Senate version of the bill is used) as a massive victory.

Victory is relative, I guess. While the final details of the energy bill remain to be hammered out, it looks like it will join the Medicare reforms as another example of corporate fealty triumphing over the common good. Was anyone expecting anything more…or less?