The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Energy: One Year Later

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. One year ago today President Carter announced that the impending energy crisis was to the United States the moral equivalent of war. The initials of those dire words, as the Wall Street Journal and others have noticed, add up to the derisive anagram MEOW. There`s a lot of derisive comment today about what hasn`t happened in the year since Mr. Carter sent Congress his massive energy plan stressing conservation and the search for alternatives to imported oil. Today, after a year of politicking, the energy legislation is still stalled by political bickering on Capitol Hill. Curiously, however, behind all the rhetoric for and against Mr. Carter`s view of the crisis, the latest energy statistics are encouraging.

Two facts: in the first quarter of 1978, oil imports, for whatever reason, fell fourteen percent, and the consumption of energy slowed significantly in the year 1977. Those were the immediate aims of the energy legislation - - reducing imports and curbing consumption. So tonight we ask, Why can`t Mr. Carter get an energy bill out of Congress, and does it matter if he doesn`t? Jim?

JIM LEHRER: Robin, different people chose different ways to celebrate today`s no-energy-bill-yet birthday. President Carter went to the briefing room of the White House this afternoon and made this statement:

(Courtesy of NBC.)

PRESIDENT CARTER: One year ago today I spoke to the Congress and to the American people about the need for a national energy plan. I said then that this was the gravest domestic challenge that would be faced, perhaps in our lifetime, and that solving it would take cooperation and sacrifice from all our people. I also said that the proposals in this plan would be complicated and often unpopular and that no solution would be quick, but that we had no alternative but to begin and to act without delay.

None of that has changed in the last year. All that has changed is that we have wasted twelve months of precious time. During the past year we`ve spent $45 billion importing oil from foreign countries, an average of about $1,000 for every family in the United States. Because of these mammoth imports our trade deficit has soared and the value of the dollar has dropped. These developments have caused part of the crucial problems that we face here at home of inflation and unemployment. Because of this delay, governments and people all around the world are asking when we will summon the will to pass an energy plan, as every other industrialized nation in the world has already done.

There have been some few promising developments in this last year. New oil from Alaska has given us a temporary reprieve from importing so much oil from overseas. But unless we act on energy legislation and to eliminate waste of energy, this temporary reprieve, counting all the Alaskan oil, will end in eighteen months. The American people have begun to respond by insulating their homes, by switching to lightweight cars, and by taking other action that will contribute to a permanent solution for our energy problems.

We are all more aware, I believe, of the need to conserve energy than we were one year ago. All of this has happened without legislation, but we cannot afford to wait any longer. Although no final action has been taken, the Congress has tentatively agreed on three of the five issues that are before the conference committees now. I recognize that the remaining issues are difficult, and particularly the pricing of natural gas -- an issue confronting our people and the Congress for at least thirty years. But now is the time to bring that Congressional debate to an end. We must have energy legislation without delay, and I call on the Congress to fulfill its duty to the American people. Where legislation requires firmness, I will continue to be firm. Where compromise is necessary, I will make reasonable compromises. And when it requires a special expression of the nation`s interest, I will speak for that interest above the special interests that have hindered our progress so far. The American people expect these same qualities from the Congress.

LEHRER: Several blocks away at the Capitol, the celebrating was somewhat different. Some Republicans and dissident Democrats had a cake and a papier-mache turkey to mark the day. Senator Carl Hansen, Republican of Wyoming, remarked that the President`s energy program amounts to the moral equivalent of wishful thinking. The House Republican leadership had a large glazed donut at their separate celebration. Congressman Clarence Brown, Republican of Ohio, said the donut itself symbolized the fact that the Carter energy plan was like the hole in a donut. It was glazed, he said, like the eyes of the American people on this issue.

There was some serious activity on the Hill as well, though. The House had its normal business slowed down by what was called a mini-filibuster, a series of quorum calls, objections, amendments to amendments, and so on. The effort was spearheaded by House members demanding that the energy conference committee be open to the press and public and that the three of the five energy provisions already agreed to, the ones the President just mentioned, should be voted on formally now and passed.

The leader of the push is Congressman Toby Moffett, Democrat of Connecticut, a member of the conference committee who announced last month he would not attend any more meetings that were closed. Congressman, you have two purposes in your efforts today, as I understand it, first to open up the conference committee. Why do you want to do that?

Rep. TOBY MOFFETT: Well, it`s important to open it up because the House rules require that the conferees meeting and trading and bargaining behind closed doors come out into the open. That`s something that people fought for for decades in the House of Representatives.

LEHRER: So it`s the principle.

MOFFETT: And there was a vote last week on a motion that I offered, a privilege motion, as it`s called. There was a vote of 371-6 ordering the conferees to open up the conference -- this is in the full House. So it`s really important, and also important to ask, What happens behind closed doors? And what happens behind closed doors is special trading that`s not in the interest of consumers.

LEHRER: Okay. As a result of that vote last week and as a result of your efforts today, was it in fact opened?

MOFFETT: No, it was not opened. The leadership and conferees continue to defy the overwhelming vote of the House, and the President continues to give support to that. Here`s a President who talked about openness in his campaign, he was going to open up government, bring it back out into the sunshine, and he`s endorsing a violation of House rules. It also brings up the question of where he`s been for the past year if he views the situation as he stated in the little clip you had. We offered- him an opportunity in November, and he`s had it every day since, to accept those important pieces of the program that are already done.

LEHRER: Three of the five.

MOFFETT: Utility rate reform, insulation, coal conversion, auto efficiency and many other things; and the solar industry, insulation industry and consumers who are conservation-minded are suffering in the mean time because they get no direction and no encouragement from Washington.

LEHRER: Congressman, as you know, those who differ with you on that say that means that that`s throwing up your hands on the other two, natural gas and the crude oil wellhead tax.

MOFFETT: Absolutely not. We think that the natural gas issue should be clarified; the President actually told some consumer groups that it was too complicated an issue to discuss in public and that the public really didn`t care about it. I guarantee you they`ll care about it when they see their gas bills in three and four and six years.

LEHRER: Did your push to get those three out of five out and voted on gather any momentum today as a result of your actions?

MOFFETT: It has gathered a lot of momentum, and I think we have the votes to do that. It`s interesting to note that Congressman Brown, whom you showed in the picture, he and I disagree 180 percent, I think, in terms of the positions that we take on natural gas, but we also agree that it`s time to get away from the package approach and send to the President the conservation pieces, the solar, and so forth, to give a signal that we`re on the road. That doesn`t mean that we don`t want to settle the natural gas crisis and we don`t want to settle the natural gas situation and clarify it and get more predictability for producers and consumers; but that natural gas section has been holding up the rest of this bill for five or six months, and it shouldn`t be allowed to do it any further. The President mentioned inflation; it`s going to be very inflationary, a $50 or $60 billion punch to the economy and, I think, getting very little for it in terms of additional supplies.

LEHRER: You mean about the natural gas.

MOFFETT: Yes.

LEHRER: All right. Thank you, Congressman. Robin?

MacNEIL: Yes, let`s get the view of a Congressman who has been sitting in on those mysterious closed-door meetings. Charles Wilson is a Texas Democrat who was appointed to the ad hoc energy committee set up by the House of Representatives to handle this legislation. Congressman, why don`t you guys come out in the open and handle these proceedings in public?

Rep. CHARLES WILSON: Well, as was said earlier, this issue has been debated for thirty years. We had open sessions and made no progress. We have members on the conference committee that really have publicly announced that they no longer want a bill. So when they`re included, then there is generally a disruptive force at work. Now, there`s a very technical point as to whether or not we`re violating the House rules. Basically, we think that we`re working to try to get something to present to the full conference committee that will be accepted. There is not a-single issue more important for this country, there`s not a single issue more important toward energy independence than solving the natural gas issue and in giving producers a certainty of price so they know what to expect so they will make the capital investment necessary, and so consumers can know what it`ll cost.

MacNEIL: What do you say to Congressman Moffett`s charge that what`s really going on behind those closed doors is special interest trading that is not in the interests of the consumers?

WILSON: It`s not special interest trading. What happened is very simple. The Senators were split nine to nine on the conference committee. Through Herculean efforts the Senators were able to combine about five of them that were opposed to deregulation, four of them had favored deregulation, through a very, very fragile compromise. The object now is to try to tailor that compromise to something that the House conferees can accept. It`s very, very difficult, it`s very emotional -- it`s almost like religious warfare. The combination they`ve made is so fragile that when it is in public and when the posturing begins, and then when you have the disruptive elements of all the people that have already stated they don`t want to solve the problem, it just makes it impossible.

MacNEIL: How hard are you gentlemen and ladies working at it? I mean, how many hours a day are you spending at it?

WILSON: We spend every hour of every day that we`re not voting on the floor. It`s been that way all week; most of us have been at it -Toby was with us in December for the so-called Christmas compromise - we`ve been at it now since Thanksgiving; we`re all extremely tired of it; we could all go deaf and it probably wouldn`t make too much difference because we`ve heard all the arguments so many times. But we are very close right now. We are very, very close. We`re closer than we`ve ever been. And for us to do anything that would allow this opportunity to escape would be a terrible mistake, in my judgment.

MacNEIL: How close, Congressman?

WILSON: Very close, I would not be surprised -- and I told Jim earlier that I certainly didn`t want to make a prediction, because my predictions usually cause whatever I want to happen not to happen -- but I really wouldn`t be surprised if we achieved an agreement in principle by Monday, if we continue to put the kind of effort in that we have. Senator Bumpers can probably put more light on that than I can. But I feel better about it now than I have for the entire year that we`ve wrestled with the problem, and I don`t want to let it go; I want to solve the problem.

MacNEIL: Why wouldn`t it be better to do what Mr. Moffett`s suggesting, pass out to the floor and get enacted into law the parts that are already agreed between the Senate and the House?

WILSON: Because the parts that are already agreed to are parts that people want. They`re tax credits, they`re conservation that everybody thinks is needed. There are those of us that think that we need this incentive to pass the gas bill. We`ve not been able in the last thirty years to pass a gas bill by itself, so we want to use those three carrots to help provide an incentive for reluctant members to vote for the gas bill that we finally fashion. It`s very difficult to fashion a gas bill that`ll get a majority in both houses, and we want to have every bit of momentum possible when we bring it to the floor.

MacNEIL: Well, if you get that gas compromise by Monday, if your prediction turns out to be right, or somewhere around then, is that it? Do you agree with other people who say that the wellhead tax is a dead issue, and there`s no possibility of that?

WILSON: Well, it`s not it; I mean you can`t say that`s the end, because the President has the option, without Congressional approval, of raising the tariff on imported oil, which will have the same economic effect. So let`s assume that we can`t get a crude oil equalization tax; let`s just assume that we can`t do it. If we can`t do it, the President still has the essential elements of his energy bill; he`s got the three relatively non- controversial items, he`s got the natural gas pricing act that has escaped every President for the last thirty years, and by executive action he can raise, essentially, the price of all of our crude oil to the world price. So he will have achieved the economic goals that he set out to achieve, and it will be no small achievement.

And I`d like to say one more thing: I`d like to say that in my judgment it would be impossible for the President or for the people in the Energy Department -- the Secretary of Energy, Mr. O`Leary, all them-- it would be impossible for them to have done more than they`ve done to try to bring about this agreement, particularly during the last two weeks.

MacNEIL: Thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: All right, on the Senate side one of the key conferees who has been in on those closed sessions is Dale Bumpers, Democrat of Arkansas. The Senator is a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and vice chairman of its subcommittee on energy research and development. Senator, you heard what your colleague on the conference committee, Congressman Wilson, says: it`s very, very close, possibly by Monday. Do you agree?

Sen. DALE BUMPERS: I think maybe Charlie`s just a little bit optimistic; I`ve thought that so many times, and as the old saying goes, you know, any fights I win with my wife just aren`t over, and...

(General laughter.)

BUMPERS: ...every time we think we`re close, the whole thing comes unraveled. And so I`m not quite as optimistic as he is -- as a matter of fact, there are three specific provisions that we`re talking about right now that trouble me, and I`m not sure I can vote for them. On the question of...

LEHRER: Three specific provisions to a compromise.

BUMPERS: That have been talked about in the compromise. There`s no voting taking place in there; this thing is so fragile that you have to have a unanimous agreement among all those people who are in those closed sessions or you just don`t have a deal.

LEHRER: Why is it so fragile? The Congressman used the same term.

BUMPERS: Well, Toby Moffett touched on it a while ago. Toby Moffett is adamant for regulated gas prices, and I`m almost as adamant as he is, except I know that I can`t have that. We`re dealing with the art of the possible, not the art of the impossible. And both he and Clarence Brown want these meetings out in the open. And I`d like to see them out in the open, too, but we`ve tried that, and I can tell you if we do it there isn`t going to be an energy bill.

LEHRER: Why would just being open...

BUMPERS: Well, because there are about eight television cameras in the back of that room, there are about three to four hundred ardent lobbyists, mainly from the industry, you`ve got twenty-three House members and seventeen Senate members, all of whom love television cameras; and it just isn`t going to happen. And so in the closed session there isn`t anything really secret about it. I`ll tell you or the whole world everything that goes on in there, what we`re talking about. It`s just...

LEHRER: What is the nut of the problem right now?

BUMPERS: The nut of the problem is that -- I agree with Toby, I`d like to see those three bills that we`ve already agreed on passed. But the truth of the matter is, none of those bills will have any significant impact on the import of oil in this country before 1985. And the problem of the declining value of the dollar, the problem with inflation in this country is now. Now, the natural gas pricing bill, by encouraging, or at least not giving anybody a price incentive to keep gas within a state and encouraging these people to sell gas in interstate commerce, if this bill were to pass, even under the tentative compromise proposal right now, we`d get a trillion to two trillion cubic feet of gas a year into the interstate pipeline, and that would make a 200 to 400 million barrel difference in oil imports in this country. That`s the problem. I don`t like this bill, incidentally; I`m with Toby on regulated prices, but as I say, he`s for it, Clarence Brown is violently for deregulation.

LEHRER: And Congressman Wilson also -- you`re very much in favor of deregulation, right?

WILSON: Yes, absolutely.

BUMPERS: I like to think some of us more sensible people are in there. (Laughing.)

(General laughter.)

LEHRER: Okay, but where is the bottleneck? Is it with the Wilson people, who are adamant for deregulation, or is it with the Bumpers people, who are adamant the other way, and both of you willing to give? Where is the problem on the give?

WILSON: I`ve got to say that the responsibility is with the House conferees at this point, because the Senate conferees are united, or they have a very clear working majority that are united with a fragile, fragile compromise. So the problem is with the House conferees, and we have to come together.

LEHRER: Do you agree, Senator?

BUMPERS: I think that`s essentially right. There are about nine -- let me put it this way: there are seven Senators who will not vote for anything short of total deregulation. Maybe I`m overstating it, but it`s close to that. Then you`ve got some who will not vote for anything short of total regulation. And there`s just not a majority in between. Now, we`ve put together this little fragile coalition of those of us who favor regulation but who are willing to give the oil and gas companies a chance to find enough gas between now and 1985 to introduce competition into the gas business. That`s the reason I favor regulation. I don`t want to get into the philosohpical arguments, but there isn`t any competition in the gas business and there won`t be as long as the demand so far exceeds the supply.

LEHRER: Congressman Moffett, let me ask you: you heard what Congressman Wilson and Senator Bumpers have said as to why they`re behind closed doors, that if they don`t go behind closed doors there isn`t going to be an energy bill.

MOFFETT: With all due respect to my friends -- and they are my friends -- that`s always the excuse, that`s always the reason, hat`s always the rationale that`s given for secret meetings. And I thought we were well beyond that in American politics, I thought most institutions were opening up. I`m not saying that we shouldn`t ever have meetings of a few people here and a few people there; in fact, the meetings that I was in on around Christmastime at the White House were meetings of Democrats. Then they introduced Republicans, and it looked more and more like a mini-conference. And I want to say something about what goes on in those rooms. I wish I had brought some of my notes.

I asked a certain Senator, what do we get for this particular provision, this particular provision which costs seven billion dollars --this is just a small part of this gas bill -- how much additional gas? And he said, Well, we don`t get -- this is behind closed doors, now -- we don`t get any additional gas for that, but this is important to Senator so-and-so. I said, Well, what about this provision? This costs six billion dollars by 1985. How much additional gas? Well, nothing, but this is important to Senator so-and-so. He couldn`t say that in public. And they admit that, and that`s one of the reasons -- I`m not suggesting a conspiracy here -- but that`s one of the reasons that this is put behind closed doors. Not because there are certain members that are going to grandstand; there are all sorts of procedural devices that you can employ to limit time and so forth in a conference committee, and you can do that in public as well as in private. The real reason it`s behind closed doors -- and I think Charlie Wilson implied it -- is that the other parts of the bill, the good parts, the conservation parts, are being held hostage; and I don`t think it`s...

LEHRER: He said as a bargaining chip.

MOFFETT: I know that, but I don`t think it`s really fair to suggest that those of us who are unhappy with the natural gas compromises where they are now have not been willing to compromise along the way. There has been an 800 percent increase in natural gas prices in nine years, and production has gone like this, and that has to be explained.

BUMPERS: Just one point that I`d like to make, and that is that Toby and every member of that conference committee -- if and when this group that`s been meeting reaches any kind of an agreement, that whole thing is going to have to go public; Toby, everybody in there is going to have to agree to it, he`s going to have a right to torpedo any part of it he`s capable of torpedoing, he`s going to have a right to offer amendments, he`s going to have a right to ask, Why did you put this provision in? Who is this accommodating? The whole thing.

LEHRER: All right. Thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: Let`s come now to the other question that I mentioned at the beginning of the program: Do we still need an energy bill, in view of the facts that the President himself recited in the statement we saw? John O`Leary is the former administrator, or the administrator of the former Federal Energy Authority, and now Deputy Secretary of the new Energy Department. Mr. O`Leary, in view of the arrival of Alaskan oil, the latest statistics that are out on the downturn in oil imports, by fourteen percent the first three months of this year, the significant decrease in the rate of increase of energy consumption last year, why do we still need a bill?

JOHN O`LEARY: Well, we need a bill primarily because if you look beyond the next couple of years we`re going to be right back in the soup again if we don`t get a bill. Let`s take that decrease in imports. We`re not having the worst winter in a hundred years right now, and that contributed, of course, to last winter`s imports and contributed to the (unintelligible) this year. Right now we`re getting a little better than a million barrels a day of oil from Alaska that we didn`t have in the system last year at this time. So of course we knew that imports were going to go down. But when you take a look at the posture of this country three, four, five, six years from now, the posture that will be influenced by this bill for good or for ill -- for good if we pass it, for ill if we don`t -- we`ve got to have this piece of legislation. We`re in serious trouble.

MacNEIL: The Wall Street Journal says, referring to administration predictions of a crisis by 1985 we don`t do something, "The only way there will be an energy crisis in 1985 is if the government causes one," meaning interferes with the natural flow of prices in the marketplace.

O`LEARY: One of the things that we`re finding here is that this compromise that was being discussed here will probably lessen between now and 1985 the role of government in setting prices. And I think that people generally feel that we`ve been in the price control business for a very long period of time and it`s time that we began to look at the other side of that coin. So I think to a degree the Wall Street Journal is correct, that we could make the situation worse. But et me say that if we don`t take very, very strong action during this next three or four years, and if the possibility that we regard as highly probable, that world production will peak in about 1982 and there`ll be a mad scramble in the early `80s for oil around the world -- the Japanese bidding it up, as they did in `73 and `74, the British bidding it up, the Western Europeans, the developing countries -- that we`re going to see prices skyrocketing, going through the roof. And you know, we`re still suffering in this economy from the effects of the last time that prices went up violently. We just can`t afford that again.

MacNEIL: Mr. O`Leary, why doesn`t the White House like Mr. Moffett`s idea of passing out the bits that have been agreed and getting them and going with them and then hassling over natural gas?

O`LEARY: Because it`s quite evident that if we take the pressure off the natural gas compromise we won`t achieve it this year, or the odds of achieving it are reduced very, very significantly.

MacNEIL: Is it still the moral equivalent of war, Mr. O`Leary?

O`LEARY: We`ve seen, first of all, that people said, "Ah, this is serious," and then after a week or two the consumers looked at it and said, "Well, it really doesn`t require us to do anything, this is an easy bill." But now we`ve found that the entire attention of the Congress for the last year has been on this piece of legislation, and I`m beginning to think that people are really coming to the President`s initial assessment that this is a tough piece of business to get behind us and does approach the moral equivalent of war.

MacNEIL: Senator Bumpers, do you still feel that way about it, after all the battles you`ve been through this year?

BUMPERS: (Laughing.) No, I`d have to disagree with John on that. I don`t think it`s the moral equivalent of war. I do think that the urgency -- in this time of affluence and time of plenty of energy, it`s very difficult to get people excited about it. And that`s the problem we`re facing right now with natural gas. If we had an oil embargo again tomorrow, that natural gas bill would pass in nothing flat.

MacNEIL: Congressman Moffett, how urgent do you think it is that we get something out of there, along Mr. O`Leary`s line?

MOFFETT: I think it`s important, but I think it`s really too bad that both the administration and the Congressional leadership seem to be willing to take anything -- the President has virtually said he will take anything as long as it looks like an energy bill -- and I think this quest for some symbolism, some symbol to the world, is being put ahead of a fairness to consumers. I don`t see a lot of sensitivity, frankly, in this town for what`s going to happen when those gas prices start shooting up, not a little bit, because I have often thought if gas prices go up a little bit and we get some incentive for producers where it`s needed, not as just fat on what they already have, that it could be important, and we`d be willing to do that. I think people are willing to conserve; I think the figures that came out today that you mentioned at the top of the show, show that they`re willing to conserve; but the game has to be fair, and it can`t just be a one-sided matter.

MacNEIL: Congressman Wilson, what`s your view of the urgency?

WILSON: I think it`s very urgent. There`s two sides to the consumer issue. One is the fact that consumers don`t want to pay any more than they have to for gas, but the other is that they have the gas when they want it. Now, it doesn`t make any difference how cheap it is if when you turn on the burner there`s no gas there. And I think the people in Ohio and in Indiana and in other places that have been short are willing to pay the same wellhead prices as my constituents pay, as the people that live on top of the gas fields pay. And...

MacNEIL: We have to leave it there, Congressman. Sorry to interrupt you.

WILSON: That`s a good place to leave it. (General laughter.)

MacNEIL: Mr. O`Leary, thank you very much; and thank you, gentlemen all. Good night, Jim.

LEHRER: Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: That`s all for tonight. We`ll be back tomorrow night. I`m Robert MacNeil. Good night.