After the Veto

Although the nation's gasoline shortage seems likely to be eased by the lifting of the Arab oil embargo, the Administration is still actively seeking stand-by authority for mandatory nationwide gasoline rationing. Reason: there is still a need to restrain energy consumption until the flow of Arab oil is fully restored--if indeed it is fully restored. Last week President Nixon asked Congress to enact a bill that would revive many provisions of the Emergency Energy Act that he vetoed the week before because it would have forced a rollback of oil prices. In keeping with Nixon's view that the nation now faces an energy "problem" rather than a "crisis," the new bill is entitled the Special Energy Act.

Besides granting explicit authority for rationing, the new bill would give the President broad powers to control the way Americans use energy. Instead of merely requesting that businesses reduce outdoor advertising and ornamental lighting, for example, the President could order them to do so. Presumably, he would also get the power to set national highway speed limits and to limit supplies of fuel to commercial airlines. If the nation's energy supplies continue to be pinched, the President would invoke such measures long before resorting to rationing--and not only for philosophical reasons. A careful study of the contingency rationing system announced in mid-January, which supposedly could have gone into effect in March, has turned up a number of serious flaws. The Federal Energy Office now estimates that a revised system could be ready for use no sooner than early June.

At week's end, the Administration and Senate Interior Committee Chairman Henry M. Jackson had worked out a compromise between Nixon's proposals and a revised version of the old Emergency Energy Act, which Jackson will introduce this week. But the legislation still faces an uncertain future. The end of the Arab embargo could persuade many members of Congress that there is no need to hand over such wide-ranging authority to a President whom they deeply mistrust.

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