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

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When Maine's Ed Muskie eventually got the floor, he accused the Vice President of arbitrarily creating "a new order of things, a change in the rules." Colorado Democrat Gary Hart charged that "the U.S. Senate has seen an outrageous act.'' Swiftly, the senatorial anger zeroed in on Byrd. By now, Byrd was burning too. Referring to the weeklong filibuster, despite the vote for cloture, he insisted, "I have not abused the leadership's prerogatives. I am trying to keep Senators from abusing the Senate." Byrd admitted that he had taken "extraordinary advantage of my prerogative as leader," but insisted that "one has to fight fire with fire when all else fails."

With that, Byrd backed off. He promised to call up no more amendments for Mondale to knock down. In theory, the filibuster was still alive. But Abourezk and Metzenbaum, convinced that Carter had sold them out and had sent Mondale in to break up the talkathon, had lost heart.

After the emotion-fraught session that broke the filibuster, the rest of the week's actions in the Senate seemed anticlimactic. But they were far from that. For one thing, Byrd and Baker quickly appointed informal committees to propose changes in Rule 22, now shot through with procedural holes. The outcome could have considerable impact on the Senate's jealously guarded tradition of unlimited speech. Then there was the energy bill itself. The day after the filibuster was killed, so was Carter's proposal for keeping price controls on natural gas. While deregulation is all but certain to die in the House-Senate conference, the gas producers will probably get a price ceiling not far below what they had hoped for had all restraints been removed.

Apart from deregulation, the other differences between the Senate and House treatment of Carter's energy package point toward the likelihood that a handful of Senate and House conferees will determine the ultimate outcome. Responding to Speaker Tip O'Neill's expert prodding, the House had passed most of the Carter program intact—and in a single bill. But the Senate has been slicing it up, bit by bit, into a series of bills. The conference committee cannot be assembled until the Senate completes its multiple energy moves, and that could take several more weeks.

The full Senate last week did approve a bill to revise utility rates so as to encourage production and conservation, but it falls far short of what Carter had sought. Its main break for consumers would be a rate cut of roughly 40% for persons at least 62 years old. The Senate Finance Committee failed to agree on Carter's proposal for a tax on crude oil and rejected his plans to tax the business uses of oil and natural gas. The committee also bristled at a White House threat that Carter would use his Executive authority to impose tariffs on imported oil if Congress failed to pass his proposed seven-year $85.7 billion crude oil tax; the committee passed a provision specifically forbidding him from levying such a tariff.