The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Energy Plan in Congress

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. President Carter has entered the trenches for a last-ditch battle over his energy program. He`s put off his wide-ranging world tour to stay home and keep the heat on Congress to get an acceptable energy bill by year`s end. Last night he made only the third direct television report to the American people of his presidency. Using what Teddy Roosevelt used to call the "bully pulpit," he urged all Americans to help their Congressmen put long-range energy needs above politics and special interests.

PRESIDENT CARTER: There is some part of this complex legislation to which every region and every interest group can object. But a common national sacrifice to meet this serious problem should be shared by everyone, some proof that the plan is fair.

Many groups have risen to the challenge, but unfortunately there are still some who seek personal gain over the national interest.

It`s also especially difficult to deal with long-range future challenges. A President is elected for just four years; a Senator, for six; and our representatives in Congress for only two years. It`s always been easier to wait until the next year or the next term of office, to avoid political risk.

But you did not choose your elected officials simply to fill an office. The Congress is facing very difficult decisions, courageously; and we`ve formed a good partnership. All of us in government need your help. This is an effort which requires vision and cooperation from all Americans. I hope that each of you will take steps to conserve our precious energy, and also join with your elected officials at all levels of government to meet this test of our nation`s judgment and will.

MacNEIL: The President made a veiled threat to veto any bill that emerges from Congress if it does not meet his criteria: that it be fair to consumers and producers, that it promote energy conservation, and that it not disrupt the federal budget. Congressional reaction initially suggested that Mr., Carter had not, right away, won many fresh hearts and minds on Capitol Hill. Some Democrats said they doubted it would make much difference, some Republicans accused the President of turning energy into a partisan issue. Tonight, a look at just what`s happening to the energy plan in Congress. Jim?

JIM LEHRER: Robin, the real object of the President`s attention is obvious -- the members of the conference committee now trying to thrash and compromise their way through the varying energy bills that came out of the House and Senate. They`ve already been at it for three weeks, and they`re continuing to work through the current Congressional recess. The work is slow and tedious, going through the bills paragraph by paragraph, exemption by exemption, line by line, sometimes even word by word. Here`s a flavor of what it was like at yesterday`s session on coal conversion:

(Film Courtesy of ABC)

Sen. FLOYD HASKELL, (D) Colorado: Are we dealing with this situation where, in dealing with offshore installations, if we don`t do something you`d have to have a coal barges and coal fire facility on offshore, is that what we`re talking about?

Rep. JOHN DINGELL, (D) Michigan: With the Senator, your...

HASKELL: I`m just trying to clear myself up, why...

DINGELL: ..are subject to a separate treatment later on in the bill.

HASKELL: Okay. So we`re not dealing with that situation.

DINGELL: Most assuredly not. That is correct.

HASKELL: Okay. If we`re dealing solely with compressors on a gas pipeline, is the suggestion of the gentleman from Michigan that all they have to do is to certify -- FEA doesn`t have to act, but they`ve just got to certify, they`ve just got to notify the FEA so the FEA has a complete bank of information. Does the Senator from Kentucky find that objectionable?

Sen. WENDELL FORD, (D) Kentucky: I will accept -- and I`ll make the motion in a minute. But I want it understood that it becomes Part B, Line 3...

LEHRER: Today, in an attempt to speed things up a bit, the Representatives and Senators split up into two groups, one to handle tax-related energy legislation, the other to work out all others. The target is to have a neat and tidy, smooth and acceptable energy package on the President`s desk by Christmas, but some have already suggested that in order to do that they might have to first mandate Christmas be delayed a month or two. Robin?

MacNEIL: The basic problem has been major differences between House and Senate, both of method and philosophy in tackling the energy proposals. The House essentially bought the Carter approach: energy conservation through taxes and regulation. The Senate has rewritten virtually all of the White House proposals, and placed far greater emphasis on stimulating domestic oil and gas production. Take the fight over natural gas, for example. Back in April the President proposed continuing federal price controls on gas shipped from one state to another and putting controls on the price of gas sold within the state where it`s found. The House bought that idea; but the Senate, after a marathon filibuster, voted to deregulate the price of all new gas.

Congress is also decidedly split on the President`s suggestion that the federal government overhaul the pricing policies of utility companies. The House liked the idea, even added some teeth to it. But the Senate voted a resounding no.

There are also some strong differences of opinion on the various oil and natural gas taxes the President proposed. The House approved a measure that would increase the cost of domestic crude oil and one that would tax heavy users of oil and natural gas. Both were designed to encourage conservation, and conversion to coal or other sources of energy. After a long debate the Senate approved both measures in principle, but insisted they be tied to tax credits and other items designed to encourage more domestic production of fossil fuels.

Another Carter proposal, a tax on gas-guzzling automobiles, survived a test in the House but was killed in the Senate. The Senate instead passed a bill prohibiting manufacturers from turning out cars that get less than sixteen miles to the gallon by 1980. The House has passed no such measure, and last week when the issue came up in conference both sides deadlocked on it. Jim?

LEHRER: Two of the key conference committee players very much involved in resolving all those differences are with us tonight, one from the Senate and one from the House. The House member is John Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, a member of the House ad hoc Committee on Energy and chairman of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Power. The Senator is Bennett Johnston, Democrat of Louisiana, a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and chairman of its Subcommittee on Energy Conservation and Regulation.

Gentlemen, first on the President`s speech: it was clearly designed to light fires of various kinds under you and your fifty-one colleagues on the conference committee. My question is, what effect did it actually have -- Senator?

Sen. BENNETT JOHNSTON: Well, first, it didn`t light a fire. I think the main significance of the President`s speech was to attempt to defuse the atmosphere, to back off from his posture of a few weeks ago, where he tried to polarize the atmosphere and say it was a fight between the oil companies on the one hand and the people`s interest on the other hand, and to try to create a more conciliatory atmosphere, where he didn`t call names; and that`s the kind of atmosphere we`re going to have to have for a compromise.

LEHRER: So you`re saying it`s a constructive thing, then.

JOHNSTON: I think it was constructive; I don`t think it was a big thing in that sense. I think it`s also significant as an appearance by the President as a national leader to show he`s leading the nation.

LEHRER: Congressman, what`s your view of the speech?

Rep. JOHN DINGELL: I concur in everything that my good friend said. It was a very conciliatory speech, and it did set what I think was a very conciliatory tone, which is very important in this matter. More importantly, it was a strong speech gently done. If you observed, the President in no fashion, in any way weakened anything which he had said earlier, although he re-said it gently, and he pointed out the major crisis the nation faces in terms of its energy use and wastage, which is enormous, the need for conservation and the need to begin a major energy program, and he laid out the basis for Congressional action and he really set underneath us a time bomb, because the people are going to begin making plain that they want a bill and they want one soon, and they want us to act.

LEHRER: Was there any immediate difference in the meeting of the conference committee this morning as a result of what the President said? Were you and your colleagues saying, "Hey, we`d better get with it, the heat`s on," or anything like that, Senator? Was there any change at all?

JOHNSTON: I don`t think so. There are fifty-one, I think, members of that conference: wide, disparate views on many subjects, as the opening remarks just showed; but there`s not one member of that conference that doesn`t really believe that we need a bill, that we need an energy policy, that we need to conserve. We just simply go about it in fifty-one different ways. So the President`s urging that we recognize the seriousness of the problem did not affect the proceedings today.

LEHRER: Do you think it changed any minds? For instance, in your case, Senator, of course the Senate bill, as Robin just said, is much different than what the President wanted; you personally have opposed many of the President`s views, or taken different views than the President. Did it affect the way you see any of these issues, just the fact of the President saying that...?

JOHNSTON: Not at all. I very much concur with the need for a bill and the need for a policy. I just very much believe that the views I hold are the ways to conserve and to produce additional energy -- not that they are different in every respect from that of the President, but in some important respects there are differences; and I hold those views deeply and I think that we have studied it in great detail in the Senate, and the majority of us in the Senate hold those views as well.

LEHRER: Congressman, what`s your view of whether or not the President actually changed any views as a result of his speech?

DINGELL: There was probably no immediate change, and I don`t think that was what the President`s goal was. He laid out a very strong moral tone. There has been an observable change in the way the conferees have been working together as they have grown more familiar with the subject matter, more familiar with each other, and learned how to work together. There`s a process that takes place at the beginning of a conference, particularly one as large as this, where the members learn how to work together and learn how to understand the rules under which they function, how they compromise things out. And conferences tend to start slowly and move more and more into the more difficult questions; and we do have some very, very difficult questions on which the very strongly held views of my good friend and colleague, Senator Johnston, as an able exponent of his viewpoint, and I have very strong differences on the subject of gas deregulation and some of the other things that are going to be before us.

LEHRER: All right. Robin?

MacNEIL: Well, both of you have mentioned compromise, and obviously that`s the name of the game from here on in. First of all, can I ask each of you: is there anything significantly different about this energy legislation which means that the usual thing won`t happen, that you`ll fight for your point of view as far as you can and then in the end get the best deal you can? Congressman, is there anything about this which is essentially or inherently different from any other piece of legislation?

DINGELL: Well, it is of course a major piece of crisis legislation, it`s a cornerstone of the President`s program, it`s a bill about five hundred pages long, it has one of the largest panels of conferees we`ve ever had...

MacNEIL: But I mean, is it compromise-proof?

DINGELL: No, it`s not compromise-proof; we have to compromise and we will compromise and we will come up with a conclusion and we will come up with a bill.

MacNEIL: Do you agree with that, Senator?

JOHNSTON: Very much. I`ve been saying for a long time that this bill can be compromised, and that`s one reason I thought that the President`s speech of a few weeks ago, or his press conference, in which he painted the situation in such scarlet tones, the great difference between the House and the Senate on natural gas, I thought that was inappropriate, unnecessary; and as a matter off act, I think the outlines of the compromise, which I won`t here tell my good friend -- he would probably agree with that -- but I think they`re fairly obvious.

MacNEIL: You think they are?

JOHNSTON: In my view they are.

MacNEIL: Do you want to spell them out to us, what you think they are?

JOHNSTON: Well, I think we`ve got to have a proper treatment of intrastate gas, a proper definition of new gas that gives incentive to producers but doesn`t give a windfall for the owners of old gas; we`ve got to have a phased deregulation, which the President himself endorsed during the campaign; we`ve got to have some proper prices in the transition period. I think those are the main elements, and there is not that much difference between what the President has said in the past and the position of the Senate, and I think the differences are compromisable.

MacNEIL: Do you agree with that, Congressman?

DINGELL: Well, I...

MaCNEIL: Would you like just to sign right there right now?

(Laughter.)

LEHRER: I`ve got a piece of paper, gentlemen. Do you want to make an agreement?

(Laughter.)

DINGELL: No, my good friend is one of the most adroit and able men in the Senate, and it`s a pleasure to deal with a fellow like this because he`s not only able, but he s delightful. But I`d rather keep my own counsel as to what I think our compromise is going to be. Let me say that, Bennett, I do agree with some of the things you`ve said, and I will work with you on them and on some of them we will have some modest differences.

MacNEIL: For instance, Congressman, okay, you`re both going to have to compromise, as other people on the committee are. You feel very strongly, you`ve indicated a moment ago, about the deregulation of natural gas. You are against that. Now, do you suspect that somewhere in the back of your mind you`re going to have to modify that position?

DINGELL: Well, with all respect, I am very loath to indicate any areas that I feel that I`m going to compromise in public or not compromise in public until the issue has moved a little further forward and I have a little better appreciation of just what we`re about and where the areas of possible compromise are and what it is we should do. Now on top of that we`ve got just about as many fish as we can fry right now in a number of other quite difficult technical areas.

MacNEIL: Senator, you said, according to the AP, after the President`s speech, "I don`t think the Congress would pass a bill that failed to meet the President`s standards," meaning fair and not conserving enough.

Now, his definition of fairness is that it, as you`ve just said, doesn`t give the oil companies a windfall. But as I understand your position and that of some other people from oil-producing states, what you would like is exactly what the President would describe as giving the oil companies a windfall, and therefore unfair. Now, how do you compromise away a position like that and meet the President`s definition?

JOHNSTON: I think, first of all, the Senate bill meets the President`s definition. But we can back off from the Senate bill a bit perhaps. For example, during the campaign the President said he was for phased deregulation, that it was necessary in order to give additional incentive to producers of new gas. Now if we immediately deregulated all new gas -- that`s only about seven percent of the gas anyway -- we`re not asking for immediate deregulation of all new gas; so in other words, what we`re asking for is a phased deregulation of about seven percent of--the gas per year, which is hardly the kind of windfall that conjures up the visions of wartime profits and profiteering.

MacNEIL: But just to conclude this discussion of compromise, neither of you thinks that there`s any danger of an impasse being reached in conference that would mean you`d have to tell both your houses and the White House, "We can`t reach agreement, we`re hung up.

JOHNSTON: Oh, I didn`t say that.

MacNEIL: No, you don`t agree that that`s a possibility.

JOHNSTON: Oh, I think that`s entirely a possibility. That`s why I thought...

MacNEIL: You do think it`s a possibility.

JOHNSTON: I think it`s entirely a possibility, and that`s why I thought that painting this picture of polarization, where it`s the oil companies, and by implication the Senate, against the people, where it`s rip-offs against justice -- that kind of polarization, you see, sets the scene for the first day of the conference where everyone comes in and makes these scarlet speeches and begins to believe their own rhetoric and freezes themselves into concrete and makes compromise impossible. And I don`t think it`s impossible, but I think an impasse is possible and we must all work against it because it`s in the national interest to have a compromise.

MacNEIL: Do you agree with that, Congressman? Could we end up around Christmas time with both of you shaking hands and going home to Christmas and saying, "Sorry, we just can`t reach agreement"?

DINGELL: Of course, I am enormously reluctant to accept that consequence, and I think all of us, both Senate and House and my good friend Bennett Johnston and all of us, are very loath to accept that kind of an arrangement. But more importantly, I think the national interest strongly militates against us allowing that to happen. And curiously enough, it should be observed, I think that both houses have selected some of their most able men and best compromisers to sit down and try and work this thing about. We`ve also got some pretty good fighters in there too, and I think it`s fair to say that it`s going to be an interesting conference from start to finish. But more importantly, yes, there are certain things the President will not accept, there are certain things my friend Senator Johnston won`t take, there are certain things that I simply will not tolerate, and some things our colleagues won`t take. We`re going to do our level best to compromise out and come up with a good bill. There are several things that are going to have to be understood: first of all, it`s going to take time. Second of all, we can`t be pushed too hard too fast to arrive at the compromise, because these things move at their own speed. But last of all, at a given point we may have to recognize that this thing`s not going to be finished before Christmas but it`s going to be finished after, and we may ultimately come to the conclusion that the price for the bill is too high and that we will not accept those prices.

MaCNEIL: Thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Gentlemen, let`s talk about how the able men and/or the fighters are going -- the process you-all are going to go about in resolving these various issues, because as we know, the whole thing of A conference committee is a little bit of a mystery to most Americans. First of all, let me ask you, Senator, when you go to this conference committee, do you see your role as the advocate, the representative, the delegate, so to speak, for the Senate version, or do you see yourself as Senator Bennett Johnston representing your views on energy?

JOHNSTON: That depends on whether you go in as chairman of the subcommittee from which the legislation came. In two of these bills I act as subcommittee chairman. In that role it is very much my job to uphold the Senate position, to try to bring the consensus of the Senators on the subcommittee with me in any compromise that I make. Not that I can`t put into that equation my own views, and I do, but you still have sort of a role as the captain of the team. Now when you come in as just a member of the Senate team, and someone else is acting as the chairman of the Senate conferees, you have a little more freedom, but there is still a team spirit of sorts because the Senate does want to stick together as best it can because the issue on which you may disagree on this issue may be the one with which you agree that comes along next, so you want to try to stick together.

LEHRER: Congressman, what`s your view of your role, in terms of your own individual views versus the House version of the bill?

DINGELL: Well, I`m in the happy position in this instance of having my individual views and the House views pretty generally overlap. So I am comfortable in that particular. But you have to understand that when you go to conference on behalf of the body the first thing is there`s a curious phenomenon that takes place. You don`t just mix everybody up and get a majority vote. The House agrees and the Senate agrees and the two bodies agree. So that`s your first phenomenon. But we go to the conference generally accepting the established principle that it is our duty to maintain the House position.

LEHRER: Even if you don`t agree with it.

DINGELL: No, you run into a very, very nice balancing of your duty to yourself, your constituencies, your conscience, and the body that you represent. And this comes into play on almost every single issue that you get into and how far you go in compromising; and you`d be really amazed at the very, very difficult intellectual and moral challenges and questions that you face inside yourself as you go through each and every one of these points.

LEHRER: All right. In terms of process, now, when it comes down to making the decision, let`s say, on deregulation of natural gas, will all the members of that particular conference -- it`s fifty-three in all, but some of them are in the tax group, so let`s say there are forty-some voting on deregulation of natural gas -- is it a straw vote, all the House and Senate votes are mixed up, or is it by caucus -- in other words, all you Senators get together and say, "Okay, we`ll go with this," and all the House members get together and go with this, and then it`s ... how is it done?

JOHNSTON: It takes a majority of the Senate conferees and a majority of the House conferees polled separately. Sometimes that`s very informal, you just lean over and say, "Is there any objection to that?" and hearing none, you submit it; sometimes you call the roll.

LEHRER: Congressman, let me ask you: there`s been a lot of stories -- I`m sure you-all have read them -- about the strong role that Senator Johnston`s colleague, Senator Russell Long of Louisiana, is going to play in this as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, comes with a big package of Senate tax bills and all that. How important is personality when it comes down to the nitty-gritty of working out compromise?

DINGELL: Personalities are enormously important. The individual strength, respect that the individual is held in by his colleagues on both sides of the aisle and on both sides of the Capitol is very important; his position in the conference, his ability -- all of these things come into play, and I think it should be very clear to all that Senator Long is going to be an extremely important conferee, but I don`t want anybody to take anything away from Bennet Johnston; he`s a man of enormous talent...

JOHNSTON: Thank you very much, John Dingell.

DINGELL: ...and he`s going to do very nicely there for himself and for the people he serves.

LEHRER: Do you agree that personality is important, Senator, sometimes?

JOHNSTON: Oh, I think very much so, very much so. Because in any conference, in any bill on the floor, particularly in a conference, there is a timing, there`s a shift in mood, and those who are the great legislative tacticians -- like John Dingell -- will sense that mood...

LEHRER: Come on, fellas. (Laughing.)

JOHNSTON: (Laughing.) We`ve got to go in conference tomorrow. They`ll sense that mood and sense that timing, and they`ll be creative to think of the right tone to hit at the right time and come out with a compromise.

LEHRER: All right. Robin?

MacNEIL: If I could break into this mutual admiration society for a moment...

DINGELL: We`re going to be fighting each other tomorrow. (Laughing.)

MacNEIL: Senator, you mentioned the President`s tactics a while ago. What is your impression of the way Carter`s aides, particularly Secretary Schlesinger, have handled this issue up to now?

JOHNSTON: Well, Secretary Schlesinger I think is an enormously bright man and good friend of mine. He has not played a very direct role in these negotiations; I think I`ve talked to him perhaps once, and that was at a social occasion. He has left, I think, the direct negotiation more to other aides, and he`s done, I think, some of the negotiation himself. Overall I would say the White House operation insofar as this conference committee is concerned leaves a little room for the learning process yet.

MacNEIL: What does that mean? I don`t understand that. (Laughing.)

JOHNSTON: Well, I think it leaves something to be desired. I think the White House -- understand, we`re dealing in a very complicated-area, one that`s plowing out a lot of new ground -- but I don`t think altogether they`ve known precisely where they wanted to end up; I think some of the ideas haven`t been thought through as well as they could have been -- at least, those ideas with which we on the Senate side have disagreed. I think they need to know where they`re going and how to get from here to there in a little better manner than they have. I think there`s been sort of a lack of direction. What is the White House position? That was asked on the floor of the Senate a number of times, and with conflicting signals received.

MacNEIL: All right. Do you go along with any of that, Congressman? Is that the way you view it?

DINGELL: Well, there are some things you`ve got to understand. This is a brand-new administration still; it was brand-new when it conceived the energy legislation, and a lot of the people in it were new, both to Washington and to the energy business, and a lot of us had an awful lot to learn, including myself, as we went into this. More importantly, the administration wrote this bill in an extraordinarily short time frame; we handled it in an extroardinarily short time frame in both the House and Senate -- I know Bennett had to labor mightily, as did I; and last of all, we had concurrent with this two other major pieces of legislation, the reorganization of the energy structure of the federal government into a Department of Energy, which took an enormous amount of time and which threw a great deal of disorganization into things; and of course we wrote the Alaska gas delivery legislation.

MacNEIL: That sounds like a very long excuse, if I may use the words, Congressman...

DINGELL: Well, I`m not making an excuse, I just haven`t finished.

MacNEIL: Oh, I`m sorry. (Laughing.)

(General laughter.)

DINGELL: The hard answer is that they`ve made mistakes; every administration makes mistakes, and different folks view those mistakes differently or view things as being mistakes and not mistakes. I`d give Jim Schlesinger an A. I`d give the administration a B+. I`ve had my differences with them on substantive matters, but I`ve got to say they`ve worked well with me and with the House, and I don`t have any complaints with the way they`ve functioned here.

MacNEIL: Do you think they`re learning faster, Senator?

JOHNSTON: I think they`re beginning to learn, and I don`t think there have been any irretrievable mistakes made. The real tests are yet to come, on the tax bill and on the natural gas bill. I think those are generally considered to be the two most important, and if they handle that well, if they give the right leadership, if they`re able to be successful -- and after all, that`s the acid test -- they`ll be okay.

MacNEIL: Okay. We have to leave it there. Thank you both very much indeed. Good night, Jim.

LEHRER: Goodnight, Robin. -- MacNEIL: Jim Lehrer and I will be back tomorrow night. I`m Robert MacNeil. Goodnight.