Welch vs. "Enron Loophole"

With one year to go before the votes are counted, would it be impolite of me to declare rookie Democratic U.S. Congressman Peter Welch the winner of the 2008 Vermont U.S. House race?

At the moment, Welchie's only political critics in the Green Mountains are folks on the antiwar left who are upset that Ol' Pedro has not supported the impeachment of the Liar in the Oval Office or voted "no" on any and all Iraq War money.

No Republican in Vermont is showing any interest in what would surely be a political suicide mission.

Congressman Peter Welch and New Jersey Democrat Rob Andrews, a 10-term veteran considered a "centrist" Democrat, told reporters on a telephone press conference from Capitol Hill Thursday they have introduced a bill to repeal legislation passed by the Republican Congress in 2000 that deregulated energy markets.

Dubbed the "Enron Loophole" - the legislation removed any government oversight of natural gas and heating oil markets that the congressmen say resulted in windfall profits for speculators while consumers bills have soared.

Q. How come the "Enron Loophole" hasn’t been closed up to this point?

ANDREWS: Because Peter wasn’t here to do it. Truthfully, I don't mean to be terribly partisan about this. You know, this is a David vs. Goliath issue. David is the thousands of families out there struggling to pay their heating bills, and Goliath is the financial industry. And the hard reality around here is Goliath had a lot more friends in the prior [Republican] majority than he has now.

I do think there is a different orientation in the new majority - that we’re looking to protect consumers.

I’ll give you another example. There’s a fight over the regulation of the safety of imported toys and Speaker Pelosi talked the other day about our efforts in the Congress to protect American families against toys that have lead in them or are in other ways harmful.
What was the Bush Administration’s reaction?

Please don’t give us the authority because there’s really not a problem here we need to solve.

That’s an astonishing, just an astonishing revelation into their mentality. Well, that mentality is what prevailed in the Congress until January 2007. The loophole sat there, frankly, because the prior majority supported it.

Press: But this was signed into law by President Clinton.

ANDREWS: Yeah, but it was exploited during those years and I think it’s fair to say that no one knew what the loophole would mean in 2000 when it was signed into law. It should have been fixed. It’s one of those unintended consequences of what appears to be a benign change in the law.

Democratic Sen. Carl Levin has similar legislation in play in the Senate.

Peter Welch may be a freshman congressman, but he's no dummy. And he's very experienced in the art of legislating. His appointment by Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the powerful House Rules Committee in his rookie season is one indication he hit the ground running on Capitol Hill.

WELCH: If you have every family in Vermont paying $800-$1000 more on their already very high and unaffordable heating bill because of a rip-off, money that’s going into the pockets of speculators, that’s not sustainable. So what Congressman Andrews and Sen. Levin and I want to do is get the facts out there and then get this on the floor because this is one of those types of measures that once it reaches the floor, I believe would get a very broad bipartisan vote because once it’s on there, members of Congress have to say ‘yes’ to the speculators, or ‘yes’ to the consumers.

Most of them prefer the consumers in that case.

Comments

[Tim]

I, like every other American, appreciate the continuing vigil to shut down the "enron loophole". Unfortunately, it's difficult to express to uninformed people how significant these bills may be. I can only hope that in time we can bring this issue into the spotlight by continuing to write letters to congress, news, and other media outlets, and that it begins an awakening in the American public about how they are getting fleeced.