CONGRESS REVS ITS ENGINE

Never mind that giving a $100 rebate to take the sting out of high gas prices, as proposed in the Senate last week, doesn’t solve long-term oil problems and isn’t affordable anyway. The slapdash way the plan was put together, tossed to the public then partly taken back shows just how little Congress is paying attention to energy issues.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist backed away from the rebate plan he proposed with Sens. Mitch McConnell and Charles Grassley after business interests got a look at their method for funding it. The Republican leaders had proposed changing accounting rules, called “last in, first out,” to raise taxes on all businesses that sell from their inventories, often businesses that were already suffering from high oil costs.

Business lobbyists protested loudly – apparently the leaders had neglected to clear this legislation with K Street – and the financing portion of the idea was killed. The $100 rebate remains but with the sale of drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as the means to pay for part of it.

Funding it, however, is not the biggest problem. A Congress that would seriously consider passing such a poor idea has challenges greater than running up the deficit. The nation not only faces high costs, but has challenges worldwide based on oil politics, has spent too little funding alternatives and has yet to act sufficiently on climate changes based on the use of fossil fuels.

When the response to these is to make the status quo somewhat less financially painful, you know the Senate leaders aren’t serious. (Democrats hardly did better with a plan to temporarily lift the federal excise tax on gas, as if they would solve anything.)

There are some real responses in Congress, however. Maine’s two senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, have joined with other members of Congress who have suggested eliminating or reducing the tax advantages that go to oil and gas companies. Sen. Snowe would use a narrowed “last in, first out” change for integrated oil companies; Sen. Collins’ legislation would cut tax breaks that provide incentives for exploration. Other members of Congress have similarly proposed ideas to pay for the development of alternative fuels and more efficient vehicles.

This wouldn’t lower gas prices a penny this week or this year. But it would recognize that the pain of $3-a- gallon gasoline is nothing compared with what might come in the next decade if the nation fails to act. Congress may want to send subsidies to the poor so they aren’t knocked out by these prices, but the incentive to act remains only for as long as the price at the pump is shocking.

Given the apparent lack of preparation from Senate leadership, that incentive may be required for a long time before political leadership conclude that trying to bluff through this problem isn’t an adequate response.