Scoop v. the Energy Knot

Last chance for a compromise on natural gas

The fate of Jimmy Carter's energy bill, the No. 1 item on his domestic agenda, rests squarely in the hands of a former political foe, Senator Henry Jackson. The Senator from Washington, who is also chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, has been suspected of harboring a grudge against the man who bested him in the Democratic presidential primaries. But there were no unburied hatchets anywhere in sight last week as Jackson prodded, pressured, cajoled and lectured fellow Senators to break the conference committee deadlock on a key provision of the President's program: the regulation of natural gas prices.

It was this issue that brought the energy bill to a jolting halt. Under the guidance of Speaker Tip O'Neill, Carter's legislation had breezed through the House without substantial change. But after a stormy debate and a filibuster to prevent deregulation, the Senate by a narrow vote removed price controls from natural gas right away--a solution utterly unacceptable to Carter, liberal Democrats and Jackson. Last December members of the House and Senate met, or rather collided, in conference to sweat out a compromise. After a marathon session, just before the Christmas recess a caucus of Senate and House conferees finally succeeded in agreeing on a gradual phasing out of price controls. "We wrung the last drop of blood out of that turnip," said Louisiana Senator Bennett Johnston, who favors deregulation. "If you can't pass this, I don't think you can pass anything." O'Neill's staff dubbed the agreement the "Christmas compromise." But Jackson's staff called it the "Christmas turkey."

And so it has proved to be. Jackson declined to back the compromise, and it quickly came apart when the President, too, failed to support it. Accusations were hurled at the Senate's energy expert. Why had Jackson been absent from the conference while the compromise was being put together? Was he intent on sabotaging the President's program? Jackson bridled at the charge. He had gone back to the state of Washington to see his gravely ill brother, he explained to TIME Correspondent Don Sider. "You don't put in the hours that I've put in on energy if you're that kind of a petty person. I've never worked so hard in all the time I've been in Congress." Jackson, in fact, was prominent in fashioning parts of the energy package that have been passed by Congress: incentives for industrial conversion to coal and reform of utility rate structure by the states.

Since Congress returned in mid-January, no one has worked more strenuously for the energy bill than Jackson, even though he was always a staunch proponent of natural gas regulation. While the President and Energy Secretary James Schlesinger have worked discreetly in the background, the Senator has led the fight in Congress. His counsel is usually heeded because everyone acknowledges that he is the man to engineer an energy compromise if one is possible. All sides bombard him with propaganda. Says Grenville Garside, staff director of the Energy Committee: "He knows them all and he sees them all, and he knows what they're going to tell him before they get it out."

Jackson's job is all the more complicated because the House-Senate conferees are bogged down in complex questions: how to define the "new" gas that is to be decontrolled; whether to consider offshore gas to be new; how much latitude to give the President in allocating gas in times of emergency; how long to allow for the deregulation of gas. Each Congressman has a different mix of views. "I'm going to do my best to untie the Gordian knot," says Jackson. He has six solid votes among the 17 Senators in conference and needs another three to prevail. He cannot go too far in compromising on price controls; if he does, he will jeopardize the support of the Democratic Representatives who favor regulation. "It's a holy war," says Garside. Agrees a House staffer: "The obstacle is not so much the substance as the years of accumulated distrust and ideology." Says Ohio Democrat Thomas L. Ashley: "They can't get enough votes for regulation. They can't get enough votes for deregulation. They can't get enough votes for anything in between."

Jackson is scheduled to begin a two-week trip to China this weekend, and there is a feeling that a compromise must be reached before he leaves, if one is to emerge at all. Jackson, now 65, is showing some understandable signs of fatigue. Always esteemed more for his conscientiousness than his charisma, he appears to be a bit more plodding and prosaic than usual, as if something went out of him after his try for the presidency. But he remains as approachable as ever, and just as ready to offer his opinions forcefully. In a speech on Moscow's treatment of dissidents, he summoned forth a bit of his oldtime bombast: "Shame! Shame! Shame!"

Even if Jackson wins his compromise, that does not guarantee passage of the final key portion of the energy bill: the proposed wellhead tax on crude oil, which is intended to boost the price of domestic oil over a three-year period to the level of the OPEC price. Having just returned from recess with voters' indignant objections to the massive Social Security tax hikes still ringing in their ears, Congressmen are not eager to vote for a rise in gasoline and heating-oil costs too.

Since the crude-oil tax stands in considerable danger, Carter has all the more need to win a compromise on natural gas. If he does not, his energy program will be viewed as pretty much of a flop. "You take what you can get," shrugs a White House staffer, indicating that the President will settle for what is left of his eviscerated energy bill. The question is whether what is left will be enough to deal adequately with the problems that prompted the bill in the first place.

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