Filibuster is an extended debate, generally in the United States Senate, which, because of its rules, allows unlimited debate for those who can count votes well enough to know that their side will lose should a vote be taken on an issue. Historically, filibusters have been the exclusive province of Southerners who have sought to prevent or to weaken civil rights legislation and, more recently, improvements hi antitrust laws.
Why then would a northern Senator, supposedly in his party's majority, filibuster to prevent a vote on the deregulation of natural gas? This must be answered in light of the criticism lodged against use of the filibuster. When debate on the gas bill began, Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum, Democrat of Ohio, and I were told that even if the Senate did vote for deregulation, the House conference committee would stand firm against it—and, if it didn't, the President would veto the bill.
Bу stacking those arguments the gesture might, on the surface, appear to be Quixotic. The commitment to undertake a filibuster must be one of major proportions. In addition to the physical punishment, it is a severe emotional drain because it is designed to exhaust the other side in order to weaken its commitment to an all‐out position. But exhaustion Is not limited to the other side. Even one's own supporters become impatient at the imposition on their time, and at the chaos rained upon orderly procedures necessary to the Senate's normal operation.
In the natural‐gas filibuster, the leadership, both Democratic and Republican, made every effort to direct our peers’ anger against us. The issue itself was submerged in what eventually became a battle over Senate rules, traditions and personalities. One must wonder then what is at stake in legislation dealing with natural‐gas pricing that requires a resort to such methods?
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Five years ago, the Federal Power Commission, which regulates the sale of gas sold across state lines, had set a ceiling price for gas at the wellhead of 26 cents per 1,000 cubic feet.
In its most recent pricing decision, the F.P.C. raised the ceiling to $1.40 per 1,000 cubic feet a staggering 500 percent increase. Yet during that period of rapid escalation in price, both production of natural gas and the amount of proved reserves actually decreased. Although industry arguments have always hammered at the concept that higher prices would produce more gas for the United States, behind the propaganda the claims were utterly false.
An early effort to deregulate natural‐gas prices was stopped cold when the gas industry attempted to bribe a South Dakota Senator, Francis Case, in 1956. The bribe, and its attendant publicity, hampered further efforts until 1973, when the Senate defeated, 45 to 43, an amendment by James L. Buckley, then Republican of New York, that would have lifted the lid on gas prices.
Encouraged by promises from an F.P.C. appointed by President Nixon that deregulation was just around the corner, the industry made withholding of natural‐gas reserves a basic part of its strategy in order to create artificial shortages and to save its reserves for the day deregulation would come.
Taking advantage of the air of crisis that surrounds the energy problem, Senators Lloyd Bentsen, Democrat of Texas, and James B. Pearson, Republican of Kansas, offered another deregulation amendment in 1975. The first Pearson‐Bentsen bill passed the Senate, 50 to 41. The House refused to go along with total deregulation, but by then the industry had established its running game. This year, Senate passage of the bill was aided by fears from last winter's gas shortages, which, incidentally, were created by an unusually severe cold wave and inadequate gas‐transmission facilities.
Natural gas is used to heat 60 percent of the homes in the United States. It is used almost exclusively to bake bread, as an ingredient for agricultural fertilizers, in oil refineries and throughout industry as a boiler fuel.
Deregulation—total removal of price ceilings—will have a direct cost to natural‐gas users of $160 billion by 1990, over and above even the Carter plan. What cannot be measured is the enormous cost to the economy of what ripples outward in the form of higher prices for food, for synthetics and industrial goods.
In my state, South Dakota, pensioners who receive only a couple of hundred dollars a month from the Social Security Administration would have difficulty buying food or paying rent after gas companies had exacted their tribute.
Deregulation would deal a more serious blow to our economy than did the drastic oil‐price increases in 1973 and 1974. I seriously question whether we could recover from such a blow in the near future.
If such a staggering price Increase could be shown to be of commensurate benefit to the public, perhaps the point could be reasonably debated. But as a Congressional Budget Office study has shown, total deregulation would increase our natural‐gas production by no more than 5 percent.
Once the price of natural gas rises high enough, production of synthetic gas from coal becomes economically feasible. As firms with finite resources, oil and gas companies have a gigantic stake in extending their grip on energy resources to include synthetic fuels made from coal. Already, the Senate Finance Committee, under the chairmanship of Senator Russell B. Long, Democrat of Louisiana, is considering resurrecting the Rockefeller plan to establish a multibillion dollar Government fund that would allow the industry to “develop” synthetic fuels, among other things.
The price is too high for the public to pay.
Thus, even though the oil and gas interests have succeeded in convincing a slim majority of the Senate to legalize this plunder of the public's purse, I can see no valid reason to roll over and play dead for an industry that operates solely on the basis of greed.
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Reliance on a small Congressional committee or on a Presidential veto is much too risky considering the amounts involved, especially since the oil and gas people are now talking about forcing on the conference committee a majority that supports deregulation.
Although President Carter has announced this year that he would veto a deregulation bill, last year he promised to support the industry's efforts to deregulate.
In light of all of this, Senator Metzenbaum and I agreed between ourselves to undergo what was necessary to delay a final vote on deregulation as long as we were able. It seemed to us that the discomfort to both our colleagues and ourselves was outweighed by the danger deregulation poses to the economy. Although the Carter Administration, which at first claimed to support our position, eventually teamed up with the Senate leadership to break the back of the filibuster, part of our goal has been accomplished. Without the extensive press coverage that came in response to the filibuster, the Senate would have quietly approved deregulation with no one the wiser until after the economic damage had been done.
While those on our side were accused of abusing the rules, the Administration and the leadership succeeded in actually brutalizing Senate procedures to bring about a final vote.
The puzzle went beyond the display of raw power exercised by Vice President Mondale and the majority leader, Robert C. Byrd of Virginia. It included a startling reversal of position by the Administration on the issue—a shock to nearly everyone involved. But that in itself may have accomplished something the gas and the oil industry had not anticipated: the stark realization by many Senate members of the injustice of both the industry's position on deregulation and of the tactics used to achieve it.
Defeating deregulation by filibuster was the end strategy, with the hope that public exposure of the issue would work to that end. We lost, 46 to 50, because during the 13‐day debate not enough votes were switched to change the final outcome. But another unintended result has, I think, been realized: Senate liberals, who have been beaten down, and who have felt a sense of defeat in past years because of the growing conservative trend in the Senate, came to life during the often bitter debate. One can now de tect an uplifting of those whose spirits incline toward protection of а vulnerable and unorganized public.
The battleground in 1977 and for the years to come will be centered on the basic issue of who actually runs the economy and in whose interest. Most Americans accept the characterizations of the energy proЫ em that is brought to them by the oil industry. They may not accept the industry's conclusions, but they consider the issue too complicated to impose their own ideas.
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At the same time, the industry uses other methods to create the same acquiescence in Congress. During consideration of the natural‐gas bill, oil lobbyists openly boasted to the press of their computerized bill‐analysis services and other “capabilities” available outside the Senate chamber.
The incessant repetition of the theme that American life as we know it will end unless more and more money is funneled into the oil companies has paralyzed serious debate about real policy alternatives.
The natural‐gas‐pricing issue was the scene of the first battle in a fight that will determine whether our national energy policy is to be established by 20 oil companies in the sole interest of profit, or by 200 million American people in the interest of the nation as a whole.
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