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Show Energy impact aid receives surprise vote in Senate ' (Special to the Vernal Express) BvHeleneC.Monberg washington-The unlikely coalition . lhree Senators from energy im-Zi im-Zi states who put a scaled-down 1 ;fv impact aid package thru the i le on July 31 now faces an even jjjdertask of getting it thru Congress " with funding. Members of the coalition are Sen. I ' Hart D-Colo., representing the ZL-nch West, and Sens. Wendell ns !ford D-Ky., and John Glenn, D-Ohio, presenting the energy-rich Ap- paiachian East. Concerned that two widely differing l versions of aid to local areas and Immunities impacted by energy developments had been reported out of L different committees and faced a much Senate show-down, Colorado's ujrt served notice on July 28 that he Lid put the version of the aid f ckage he favored on the 1981 Department of Energy (DOE) authorization bill. "It is the only way that this legislation stands a chance of netting thru Congress this year because he House has not taken action on any energy impact aid bill at all," Hart told Ae press on July 28. ? Sen Wendell Ford, D-Ky., who had I echoed the Hart-favored version thru f theSenate Energy Committee last year bul who had reportedly cooled to it ' " recently, was faced with a dilemma. He ,11 'could team up with Hart in making the Energy bill a rider on the DOE authorization bill or he could be left at the post. He decided to team up with rilf'Hart. The bill that the two favored provided for $400 million a year in eel; grants and loans for five years to irsenergy impacted communities and v. areas and $1.5 billion in loan guarantiees guaran-tiees over the five-year period, from 1981-86. aufi Meanwhile, Glenn had honchoed a , indifferent bill thru the Senate Govern-indjment Govern-indjment Affairs Committee in May by n, s cutting back the aid to $150 million a At year solely in loans. Glenn had fought ice; hard against the Ford-Hart version. ; M; When the DOE authroization came up on the Senate floor on July 30, under , pressure from Senate Majority Leader 3 Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., it was time '' for compromise. Ford put the original ,p Energy bill forward as a rider to the ME bill while, off the Senate floor, five e "'staffers from the Energy Committee (Richard Grundy), from the Glenn Subcommittee on Government Affairs (Len Weiss and Sandy Spector), and from the Hart staff (Peter Gold and Stephen Saunders) tried to hammer out a compromise. After three hours, they were still deadlocked. Hart and Glenn shewed up. Hart noted that Ford had already introduced the Energy bill on the Senate floor, and that a compromise was needed now. When the Glenn staffers stood fast, Hart said the battle over the two bills would have to be fought out on the Senate floor. Hart said he thought he and Ford had the votes to win. Glenn wasn't sure that he did, so he threw in the towel and joined the coalition. Meanwhile, on the Senate floor a coalition was building against the energy impact aid package on the DOE bill. Chairman Ernest F. Hollings, D-S.C., D-S.C., of the Senate Budget Committee, Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla., the ranking Republican member of Budget, and Sen. Jacob K. Javits, R-N.Y., R-N.Y., were apoplectic about bringing up such a large new program for authorization when there was no allowance for it in the first budget resolution. "We question the wisdom of greatly expanding aid to energy boomtowns at the same time that we are cutting the budget to fight inflation. How can the Senate justify increasing aid to boom-towns boom-towns when we are reducing assistance to other needy communities?" the Hollings-Bellmon letter to all Senators said. How could a new program be instituted for energy-impacted communities, com-munities, all with new-found wealth, when the federal government is cutting back aid to our dying inner-cities? Javits asked on the Senate floor. In response to those concerns, the aid package was cut back to $150 million for 1981, with 40 percent in grants and 60 percent in loans. The loan guarantee provision was not changed. When the final record vote came on the Javits motion to table the Ford-Hart-Glenn amendment, it failed 44-50 on July 31. Those voting against the motion to kill the program and for it were virtually all of the Senators from the Mountain West and Upper Midwest and Ap-palachia Ap-palachia impacted by new energy developments, and most of the members mem-bers of the Senate Energy and Senate Armed Services Committee. Hart rounded up the votes of most of his colleagues on Armed Services. Then the coalition amendment passed by voice vote in the Senate on July 31 after the Javits motion bit the dust. Still ahead, a conference with the House, which has no similar provision, and conference reports are not supposed sup-posed to contain material beyond that in the bills that came out of both bodies. And if the energy aid item gets thru conference,, it will still have to be funded, within the strictures of the 1981 budget resolutions. Neither is likely to happen, but Grundy said he would never have thought two weeks ago that the aid package would pass the Senate. "I was amazed," this energy staffer admitted. |
