Senate Majority Leader Eager to Push Energy, Environmental Issues 	
James Kuhnhenn 	
	
 	
07/06/2001 	
KRTBN Knight-Ridder Tribune Business News: Knight Ridder's Washington Bureau 	
	
	
	
Copyright (C) 2001 KRTBN Knight Ridder Tribune Business News; Source: World Reporter (TM) 	
 	
	
 	
WASHINGTON--Eager to exploit public dissatisfaction with President Bush's approach to energy and the environment, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle wants to place those issues next on the Democratic agenda, before other initiatives popular with Democrats.  Daschle's aides and party strategists say the Senate's top Democrat wants to keep the White House on the defensive, draw attention to popular Democratic goals such as promoting conservation and alternate power sources, and inoculate his party against Republicans' charges that it has ignored the country's energy needs. Activists on both sides see potential for compromises that would lead to legislation Bush can sign. 	
	
   "With summer, and gas prices, and air conditioning -- this is what you go with," said Democratic pollster Fred Yang. "It's an issue that people actually live every day. There are very few issues like that in politics."  Democrats think the energy issue has become an albatross for the White House. Recent polls show that a majority of the public disapproves of the way Bush is handling energy and environmental issues.  What's more, the House of Representatives voted to block the administration from drilling for oil and gas off Florida's gulf coast and in the Great Lakes. Both measures passed with support from 70 Republicans.  "When the Republican-controlled House soundly rejects key components of the president's energy policy, it signals an opportunity to build a bipartisan consensus that begins in the center," said Daschle spokeswoman Anita Dunn.  The decision to highlight energy policy came late last week after Daschle met privately with his chairmen of key committees. Democrats present also called for action on raising the minimum wage, hate-crimes legislation, a prescription-drug plan for seniors and other issues popular with their supporters.  But concentrating on energy policy first gives Democrats an opportunity to seize what has been a Republican issue and turn it to their advantage, aides said.  Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are dogged by their backgrounds as former Texas oilmen. From the moment Cheney argued for more oil and gas production to satisfy the energy needs of the United States, Democrats portrayed Bush and him as beholden to special interests.  "The White House and Republicans are in the 35 percent end of public opinion on this," a top Democratic leadership aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said this week. "It's a loser every day for the Republicans."  With that in mind, Daschle and Sen. Jeff Bingaman, the New Mexico Democrat who heads the Senate's energy and natural resources committee, plan to have a comprehensive energy bill ready by the end of July. It will be a full- scale alternative to the Bush-Cheney program unveiled in May.  The first floor disputes on energy policy could occur as early as next week, when the Senate debates the spending bill for the Interior Department. Republicans and White House lobbyists will have their hands full fending off Democratic amendments to match the House bans on offshore drilling near Florida beaches and on national monument lands.  The White House helped defuse some of the oil-exploration dispute earlier this week by scaling back its plans to drill in the Gulf of Mexico. But huge disagreements remain over drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a centerpiece of Bush's energy plan. Some Democrats intend to offer an amendment to the Interior spending bill that would prohibit drilling in the refuge.  Democrats also want to highlight energy conservation and lower emissions of pollutants that contribute to global warming. One proposal, which combines conservation and anti- pollution goals, would raise gas-mileage requirements for sport utility vehicles. The National Academy of Sciences is studying fuel economy standards and is expected to issue recommendations to Congress later this month.  The energy debate also splits Senate Republicans, giving Daschle extra manpower to challenge Bush. Democrats can count on New England Republicans such as Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, both of Maine, to back several Democratic initiatives.  Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who already has opposed Bush on the patients' bill of rights and campaign finance legislation, also has said he favors more conservation measures than the White House proposes.  "He'll be very prominent in cobbling a centrist coalition on the issue," said Marshall Wittman, a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute research center and a political adviser to McCain. "You can already see the outlines of that proposal -- encouragement of conservation, some exploration, but everything is environmentally friendly."  The White House already has reacted to the criticism of its energy policies. Its budget proposal earlier this year cut research spending for renewable energy, but Bush restored some of the money later. He also has paid more attention to energy conservation, indicating support for spending on efficiency measures beyond what he sought in his budget.  But the president is not backing away from his position that the United States needs to become less dependent on foreign oil. And that, White House officials say, requires more oil and gas exploration in the United States. The energy plan Bush sent to Congress last week would authorize drilling in the Alaskan wilderness refuge and would use money from the drilling leases to pay for research into alternative energy sources.  In addition to public disapproval of his stands on the environment and energy, the president is losing the sense of urgency that initially accompanied his energy proposals. Rolling blackouts in California are on the wane, gasoline prices are falling and last week John Browne, the chief executive of BP oil, dismissed Bush's call for new oil refineries.  That gives Democrats a chance to seize the issue and attack the president without competing pressure from the public for quick solutions.  "It's a target of opportunity," said Burdett Loomis, a political scientist at the University of Kansas and an expert on the Senate. Like the patients' bill of rights, on which the public sided with Democrats, energy right now "is low-hanging fruit," he said.