DeLay's issues cloud energy bill

DeLay's issues cloud energy bill

By David Ivanovich, Houston Chronicle Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Apr. 14--The political controversy swirling around House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is creeping into the debate over an energy bill.

As lawmakers in the Republican-led House worked to bring a comprehensive energy bill to the floor for a vote as early as next week, environmental groups are trying to rally opposition by stamping a key provision with a Made-in-Sugar-Land label.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday approved a provision -- adamantly supported by DeLay -- that would protect makers of the gasoline additive methyl tertiary-butyl ether, or MTBE, from lawsuits.

A similar measure helped kill the energy bill in the Senate during the last Congress.

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., reiterated his plan Wednesday to leave out that provision when the Senate fashions its energy legislation.

While other prominent House Republicans -- particularly House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton, R-Ennis -- likewise support the provision, DeLay has become the public face of this issue.

"It's not an energy bill anymore. It's an MTBE-Tom DeLay bill," complained one Republican staffer, who asked not to be named.

MTBE, much of which is produced in the Houston area, is added to gasoline to help reduce smog. But the additive has been blamed for fouling water supplies.

The current House energy bill would phase out use of MTBE by 2014.

Late Tuesday, Barton's committee added a provision proposed by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., that would suspend deliveries of crude oil to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the nation's oil stockpile, until crude prices drop below $40 a barrel and remain there for at least two weeks.

The House Resources Committee Wednesday signed off on another highly controversial measure that would allow drilling for oil and gas in a portion of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

That issue alone was enough to energize the opposition to the bill.

But environmental groups are hoping the ethics questions dogging DeLay will help derail the energy bill.

Opponents are missing few opportunities to try to link him with the bill. The Environmental Working Group, for instance, has dubbed the energy bill "DeLay's MTBE lawsuit immunity bill."

They are having some success. The Republican staffer noted the bill opponents "have changed the conversation."

"The MTBE conversation used to be about trial lawyers getting rich. Nobody's talking about that now. They're talking about that rotten Tom DeLay. It's a brilliant strategy."

Few Capitol Hill watchers believe the political calculus in Congress has changed enough that DeLay's support would actually hurt the bill's chances for passage.

"No one in the House who is serous about legislating would not want the majority leader on his side. That's crazy," said Larry Neal, a spokesman for the Republicans on the committee.

A Democratic staffer on Capitol Hill, who asked not to be named, largely agreed, noting: "Tom DeLay is still an asset, not a liability."

A spokesman for DeLay declined to comment.

Whether the DeLay controversy will help or hurt the bill's chances in the Senate remains an open question. Last November's election gave energy proponents one solid new vote in the Senate.

But in the last go-round, the energy bill fell two votes shy of surviving a filibuster. Several Northeast Republicans were loath to support the MTBE provision because of the uproar in communities where drinking supplies were contaminated by the additive.

Energy bill proponents such as Bob Slaughter, president of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, believes Congress will pass an energy bill this year, with the MTBE liability provision being part of the legislation.

The bill's supporters believe they made some Republicans more comfortable with the bill Wednesday by trimming the legislation's cost, from as much as $31 billion in the last congress to less than $8 billion

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