Congress returns this week to try to straighten out an unwieldy energy bill that seems even more poorly assembled after the recent embarrassing failure of a major electric transmission grid and a damning report from the Government Accounting Office. These, combined with lagging gas mileage standards and an absence of strong conservation measures, show what a half-hearted, mostly hidden energy policy can produce. It is too late for Congress to do anything about this dismal situation this year – unless its members put the nation’s energy requirements ahead of simply completing the bill before them.

The blackout that stretched from New England to the Midwest has been blamed on falling trees or maybe an electrical storm or maybe terrorism or some combination of high demand and natural causes. Immediately, however, the general consensus was that the nation needs more power lines. This is no doubt true, just as it needs to improve requirements for maintaining the old ones, but far too little has been said about increasing energy efficiency to reduce the demand for shipping power. And less has been said about paying for conservation, which might have kept the lines from failing at a far lower price than what the blackout cost last month. The energy bill makes a modest attempt at increasing efficiency, but even that is in doubt in the conference between House and Senate members.

The public should want to know what its elected leaders are doing about this. But instead it is confronted by a White House that behaves as if it were private corporate headquarters and tells the public, in effect, to read its annual report to stockholders. The GAO tried and failed to reach agreement with the White House over reviewing Vice President Cheney’s National Energy Policy. That policy favors more production, including expanded oil and gas drilling on public land and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and rejecting anti-pollution measures that serve as incentive for cleaner power. When Congress tried to find out how such a policy came into existence, the vice president stiffed them, leading the head of the GAO, David Walker, to comment, “This is the first time in the history of the agency that we were absolutely stonewalled and the first time during my tenure that we haven’t been able to reach a reasonable accommodation with the subject.”

Congress steps into this difficult situation having little influence on the decisions of the administration and no public way to find out why the nation would rely disproportionately on the desires of the oil and gas industries to shape policy. Its bill may contain some good and forward-looking plans, such as some modest climate change and renewable energy standards in the Senate version, but its overall direction in no way meets the energy challenges that are now apparent.

The bill is also late, having been expected two years ago. But that is no reason to rush it through now – an inadequate bill two years tardy is worse than a reinvigorated bill two and a half years tardy. Even if Congress chooses not to confront the administration on its secret energy meetings, it should use the blackout as a reason for reworking the energy bill into something that recognizes the terrible shape of the country’s energy policy. It should insist that the mantra of more – more drilling, more production, more power lines – be balanced by policies that demand the nation become smarter about energy use.