Compromise

The basis of energy politics

A needlepoint sampler with the phrase THE BASIS OF POLITICS IS COMPROmise used to decorate House Speaker Thomas (Tip) O'Neill's office. Now it sits in Energy Secretary James Schlesinger's office, a trophy of a limited but significant victory last week in the bitter war over energy policy.

By close votes--congressional compromises tend not to be unanimous--Senate and House conferees approved a plan to phase out federal price controls on natural gas. Fondling the needlepoint, Schlesinger exulted: "This is the end of the Thirty Years' War." It has indeed been 30 years since the first attempt to deregulate gas prices, but this last battle began 13 months ago, when the President sent his energy proposals to Congress. The conference committee had been wrestling with the problem for six months.

Political compromise being an expression of the possible, the plan bears little resemblance to Carter's original proposals. Despite campaign promises, the President had opted for continued regulation at a price raised in stages from $1.49 to $1.75 per 1,000 cu. ft. The House basically agreed with his plan, but the Senate voted to remove regulation. Drawing from both proposals, the conference decided to raise the price immediately to $1.75 and remove controls in stages, ending them by 1985. The compromise permits either Congress or the President, after a six-month wait, to reimpose controls for 18 months until 1988.

Congress now seems to agree on four parts of the long-delayed energy package: gas-price deregulation, the promotion of conservation, measures to encourage industrial conversion to coal and a drive for reform of utility rates. But it may be July before staffers translate the agreements into legislative language, and even then there will be tough floor fights in both houses. There could even be a recurrence of last fall's Senate filibuster on the issue of deregulation.

The fifth part of the package, which Carter called "the centerpiece" of his program, is a tax on crude oil aimed at boosting domestic prices to the world level in order to promote conservation and raise production. This would end the controversial bureaucratic swamp of "entitlements" under which refiners of domestic crude oil subsidize refiners who use more expensive imported oil. No one gives this proposal much chance of passage, however, despite the determination of House leaders to keep on pressing. A new tax, especially one that may raise consumer prices on such a basic commodity, is hardly likely to find many supporters in Congress, given the mood of the country in this election year.

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