Picture Democrats, Republicans
working together like grownups

Sen Jeff Bingaman, D-NM, was pleased with the Senate's 74-26 vote Friday to pass a sweeping new energy bill, legislation he believes “has many more bright spots than flaws and deserves passage by the Senate and signature by the President," he said.
     The beauty of it is overwhelming.
     We've covered Congress since 1960 and don't remember anything quite like it in peacetime.
     Listen to these words as Bingaman praised his Republican counterpart, Pete Domenici, who departed from the ugly partisan route of past, failed attempts at energy legislation to win      Bingaman's support and the backing of many Democrats.
     "That bipartisan consensus had its beginning earlier this year in the Senate Energy Committee, where the chairman, my [GOP] colleague from New Mexico, reached out to our side of the aisle and pledged to work in good faith with us on a comprehensive energy bill.
     "We took him up on the offer and we had an open and bipartisan committee process. The result was a bill that we could recommend to the Senate ... 21-1."
     (Odd man out? Ron Wyden, D-Ore).
     They continued to work together in an open and bipartisan floor process in the Senate to the point where the original Senate vote was 85-12.
     "In conference, my colleague from New Mexico was adamant that we use an open and bipartisan process, including House Democratic members and staff who had been excluded in the past from their process.
     "He successfully persuaded Chairman Joe Barton [R, Tex] of the wisdom of proceeding in this manner, and it proved to work very well.
     "The result was a conference report that was signed by 13 out of 14 Senate conferees.
     "The conference report was adopted in the House of Representatives with 75 House Democrats, led by Congressman John Dingell [D, Mich]," Bingaman told the Senate.
     "The conference report has perhaps some of its strongest provisions in the area of protection of energy consumers. Both the electricity and natural gas provisions of the conference contain broad new provisions to ensure market transparency and to prohibit market manipulation.
     "In the area of electric utility mergers, we have expanded the jurisdiction of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission over mergers involving existing generation plants ... plants in existence at the time that the merger takes place.
     "We have also created new requirement in the Federal Power Act for special scrutiny of possible cross-subsidization in mergers," Bingaman noted.
     Most came away from the conference with many provisions "we were happy to have... and some provisions we reluctantly had to give up on.
     "I am very sorry that we do not have a bill before us with a renewable portfolio standard.
     "I know that Chairman Barton is disappointed that he was not able to get a number of his priorities agreed to in conference.
     "But the nature of good conferences is that they push towards what can be agreed to by all and not everything ultimately falls into that category.
     "The conference report has strong provisions for increasing energy supplies from a number of sources. As I have often said, increased domestic energy production, in an environmentally sensitive manner, is one of the four key elements of sound energy policy."
     He praised the strong provisions for boosting energy efficiency. Over a dozen major new appliance efficiency standards are called for under this act.
     "The Federal government’s own energy efficiency will be enhanced through a strengthened federal energy management program.”
     Bingaman too cited extension of authority to enter into energy savings performance contracts, expanding of authorizations for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance along with weatherization and state energy programs.
     He singled out for praise a broad range of research, development, demonstration and deployment activities for new energy technologies coupling them with energy tax incentives.
     A cynic might say that most members feared being accused of interfering with efforts to lower energy prices but the beauty of seeing Republicans and Democrats working together, doing what they thought was right is a thing of beauty almost without precedent.
     It made us proud to be American..
     Originally published in Restructuring Today on August 1, 2005