The Nation - Senate approves energy reforms - The pared-down bill, endorsed by Bush, raises vehicle mpg standards.
WASHINGTON — The Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly passed a broad energy bill that would impose the most significant increase in vehicle fuel-economy standards in three decades, and the White House said President Bush would sign it.
The measure cleared the Senate, 86 to 8, after Democratic leaders gave in to the president's demands that they preserve oil industry tax breaks and drop a requirement that utilities generate more electricity from cleaner sources. The bill now heads to the House, which is expected to approve it next week before Congress leaves for the holidays.
"Thirty years ago, we didn't have airbags, the Internet was a science-fiction fantasy and the closest thing to a GPS system came from Rand McNally, and you had to fold it six or eight times," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said. "Today we have hybrid cars, hydrogen cars, ethanol cars and fully electric cars. And now, after 30 years, we are on the brink of passing new fuel-economy standards."
Even scaled back in its ambitions, the legislation marks an important achievement for Democrats, who are eager to showcase the ways they have reset congressional priorities as they wrap up their first year in charge.
But it also underscored the difficulties they face -- with their narrow majority in the Senate and the president's veto power -- as they prepare to undertake their next major environmental initiative in January: a bill that would cap greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, oil refineries and other sources.
The bill passed Thursday contains scores of initiatives designed to save energy and promote less-polluting technologies, from requirements for more efficient appliances to loans that would help small businesses use cleaner energy sources.
But it has two major requirements that will cut the nation's oil use: a 40% increase in fuel efficiency for new cars and light trucks by 2020, for a fleet-wide average of 35 miles per gallon, and a fivefold increase -- to 36 billion gallons -- in the amount of alternative home-grown fuels, such as ethanol, that must be added to the nation's gasoline supply by 2022.
"There is no act that the Congress could take that will do more to cut our dependence upon foreign oil than this measure," said New Mexico Sen. Pete V. Domenici, the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
