Where is the House energy bill?
But House Democratic leaders, hoping to pass an “energy independence” bill this month, have had to delay taking the measure to the floor for weeks. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her allies want a hefty increase in fuel-economy requirements for cars, light trucks and S.U.V.’s, but they are finding that it is not easy to maneuver around Mr. Dingell, who wants a smaller increase that would be less painful for Detroit automakers.
The power struggle pits a towering committee chairman, long accustomed to running his own show, against the first female House speaker, who has her own ambitious agenda.
When Ms. Pelosi, of California, created a new committee on energy independence and global warming in January, Mr. Dingell attacked it as a potential encroachment on his turf. Though she assured him the new panel would have no legislative authority, he remarked that it would be an “embarassment” and “as useful as feathers on a fish.”
Behind the scenes, Mr. Dingell fumes that Ms. Pelosi and other comparatively young House leaders are trying to dictate his schedule and his priorities. He grumbles about colleagues who are too “ideological,” too impatient and too unrealistic about the costs of slowing global warming. He implies that Ms. Pelosi cares more about being “green” in California than about blue-collar workers in Michigan.
“I’ve had conflicts with speakers before,” he said in a lunchtime interview, as he wolfed down a peanut-butter sandwich in an antechamber next to his committee’s hearing room. “This is not the first time.”
Were younger House leaders trying to push him aside?
”Let them try; let them try,” he replied. “They won’t be able to do it.”
The first big showdown will be the pending energy bill, which House leaders originally hoped to pass soon after July 4. Mr. Dingell’s committee has approved a measure that omits any change in fuel-economy requirements. Ms. Pelosi and many other Democrats want to add a tough requirement, much like one the Senate passed in June, as an amendment on the House floor.
The Senate passed its energy bill last month. Perhaps Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin should spend less time flying to the polar ice-caps with Nancy Pelosi and more time getting an energy independence bill passed.
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