Bush's energy bill is headed for passage, and thankfully so. Save for substantive modernization of our electricity grid, an increase in CAFE standards, an actual stance on global warming, a coherent framework for reducing our oil consumption, a serious investment in natural gas, an actual interest in new technologies for alternative sources, and really anything that'd have any sort of worthwhile impact on our energy situation at all, this bill has just what we need. Subsidies. Giveaways. Handouts. Protection. Guidelines. Bureaucracy. All sprinkled with liberal amounts of Corporate Love and put on the Senate's desk.
I've long thought the Energy Bill, more so than any other legislation, is the perfect metaphor for the modern GOP, both in substance and process. The substance of it is a mash of giveaways to Big Business, pork, and policy that makes no sense. And the process? Well you'd think they were a bunch of liberal crusaders:
From the start, Bush and GOP lawmakers have sold their energy policies as a means of reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil. "Our dependence on foreign oil is like a foreign tax on the American dream, and that tax is growing every year," Bush said in May. During the Senate debate on the energy bill last month, Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said: "We must take steps to reduce our dependence on foreign countries and thereby enhance our energy security at home. When we rely on other nations for more than half our oil supply, we simply put our security at risk."
Like the Medicare bill, this is a mess corporate cronyism sold using the language of serious progressive reform. Listening to them, you'd think Jimmy Carter was passing his dream energy legislation. That the reality has no increase in CAFE standards and was held up for a year while Tom DeLay tried to retroactively protect MTBE manufacturers from lawsuits is too perfect. This isn't conservatism. And it's only sold as progressivism. In reality, it's modern Republicanism distilled, a perfectly pure mixture of incoherence and corruption publicly aimed at solving a serious problem but privately written to ignore the issue in favor of industry demands.
