House Blocks Bid for Power Refunds
Jun 26 - Oakland Tribune
The House rebuffed a Democratic effort Friday to force regulators to order bigger refunds for electricity consumers in Western states who were victims of price gouging during the energy crisis of 2000 and 2001.
Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, offered her election-year proposal to bolster
federal energy regulators after recently released transcripts showed Enron Corp.
traders crowing about manipulating power prices in California and elsewhere.
"This is an issue about greed, greed gone insatiably wild," she
said, telling Republicans, "You have not used your power to bring
restitution" to consumers.
But in a procedural move, the GOP-led House voted 209-182 against allowing a
vote on her amendment. Republicans said her proposal was a political one that
would do nothing to resolve problems such as shortages in power supplies that
have built up for years.
"You can't come down here and beat your chest in 2004 because it's a
presidential election year and try to rewrite history" by blaming
Republicans, said Rep. Doug Ose, R-Sacramento.
Eshoo's proposal would have required the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
to order consumer refunds for the high power prices charged during the 2000 and
2001 energy crisis. It would have also forced the commission to open new
investigations to pursue refunds and order reimbursements for any future
manipulation.
By voice vote, the House approved one portion of Eshoo's plan -- requiring
the commission to release documents relating to the 2000 and 2001 power crisis.
The overall bill provides $131 million for continued preparations for a
nuclear waste storage site to be built at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, 90 miles
northwest of Las Vegas.
Bush proposed $880 million for the project, which the government hopes to
complete by 2010. But the bill ignores Bush's request to finance $749 million of
the sum by taking it from a special nuclear waste fund, which comes from fees
electric utilities charge their customers.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee approved legislation Thursday
requiring that at least $750 million be taken annually from that fund for work
on the Yucca facility. That bill's prospects are uncertain, especially in the
Senate, where Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the chamber's No.2 Democratic leader,
opposes the Yucca plan.
The House-passed bill has $4.8 billion -- $700 million more than Bush -- for
the Army Corps of Engineers and its dam, port, flood control and other water
projects. While the bill finances no new studies or construction projects, it
has money for hundreds of others from coast to coast -- and a noteworthy rebuke
of the Bush administration by the GOP-controlled committee.
A report accompanying the bill says there is "an unwritten commitment on
the part of Congress and the executive branch to meet the water resources needs
of its citizens." Bush's request for water projects "demonstrates a
surprising willingness ... to break such commitments," it says.
The bill has about the $9 billion Bush requested for the nation's nuclear
weapons program.
But it lacks the $97 million he sought for several nuclear weapons
initiatives. These include developing a "bunker buster" nuclear
warhead that could penetrate underground targets, a low- yield small nuclear
warhead, and a new plant for making plutonium triggers for the warheads -- and
for accelerating nuclear bomb testing.
The measure also has less than Bush wanted for fuel cell technology, storage
of high level nuclear waste, and efforts to help Russia secure its plutonium. For far more extensive news on the energy/power
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