The Nation: A Filibuster Ends, but Not The Gas War

Energy enough for a shouting match

Everybody lost at least something. The President looked inept. The Vice President acted like the Senate majority leader's stooge. The majority leader narrowly escaped censure by his outraged colleagues. U.S. consumers may have to pay millions of dollars a year more for natural gas. Even the ostensible winners, the oil and gas lobbies, are sure to see their victory diluted later on. But add to that list of losers another big victim, the U.S. Senate, whose venerable rules were fractured in a resort to steamroller tactics by the Democratic leadership.

It all happened during a convulsive, brawling fortnight of Senate debate on Jimmy Carter's energy legislation. By the end of last week a Senate committee had rejected key parts of the Carter package, and the Administration's salvaging efforts on the Senate floor faced heavy odds. Ultimately, the President could only look to the more sympathetic House to hang tough in the impending showdown between the two chambers over their vastly differing visions of the country's energy future.

The most dramatic—and in many ways disturbing—event of the week occurred on the floor of the Senate, as the leadership moved to choke off a filibuster that was delaying Carter's whole energy package. At issue was the emotional question of whether federal controls should be lifted from the price of newly discovered natural gas that is sold across state lines. The federally fixed price is $1.47 per 1,000 cu. ft. (or m.c.f.); gas that is produced and sold within a state's borders is free of such controls and generally goes for $2 per m.c.f. to $2.25 per m.c.f. As it had done only two years ago, the Senate voted to remove price ceilings on new gas produced onshore (the vote was 50 to 46). The slight Senate margin favoring deregulation is unlikely to impress the House, where an Administration-backed bill calling for a rise in the price to $1.75 per m.c.f., but continued regulation, was approved, 244 to 177, last August.

Thus it is doubtful that a House-Senate conference committee would sustain the Senate position supporting deregulation. What is more, Jimmy Carter has vowed to veto such a bill, and neither chamber would have the votes to override him. Nonetheless, the upshot of the Senate vote is likely to be that while controls will remain, there will be compromises that will send the price of natural gas substantially higher than Carter had wanted—perhaps as high as $2.25 per m.c.f. when a bill is finally passed.

Vice President Walter Mondale and Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd blundered as they moved to shut off an eight-day filibuster—a fight that was actually being waged in support of the President's position. The impatience of the principals was understandable—up to a point. Byrd wanted a quick Senate vote, certain that deregulation would win momentarily but lose in conference with the House. He also saw the filibuster as a threat to his developing reputation for running the Senate briskly and feared that the Senate would end up with no natural gas bill at all. The filibuster leaders, South Dakota's James Abourezk and Ohio's Howard Metzenbaum, thought they were helping Carter to get an effective energy bill.