Energy Policy United States

The clash between a congressional watchdog agency and the White House escalated Friday, as lawyers for the General Accounting Office sought a court order that would force Vice President Dick Cheney to reveal with whom he met as the administration formed its national energy plan. In its first lawsuit against the executive branch, the GAO said it has a legal right to know who attended meetings of Cheney's National Energy Policy Development Group.

President Bush mounted a renewed push Saturday for a broad national energy policy that emphasizes production over conservation--one of his top domestic priorities since taking office--but signs are piling up that the president may fall short of his goal. As the Senate prepares to tackle the issue this week, Bush called again for opening Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, arguing that greater domestic production is vital to national security and economic growth.

From the White House to the airwaves, the battle over energy policy heated up Monday as the Senate prepared for a debate that will expose divisions both between and within the parties. Environmentalists, labor unions, business groups and the White House escalated their pressure on wavering lawmakers who will cast the deciding votes on questions such as oil drilling in the Alaskan wilderness or requiring auto manufacturers to increase the fuel efficiency of cars and trucks.

A federal judge Tuesday rebuffed the Bush administration on a lawsuit concerning Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force and ordered six federal agencies to release records within the next two months. Ruling in a case filed nearly a year ago, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman said the Bush administration has had sufficient time to collect thousands of pages of material from its files. Also covered by Friedman's order is the White House Office of Management and Budget.

For weeks, President Bush and Democratic leaders have framed the energy legislation pending in Congress this week as a form of homeland defense: a way to reduce America's reliance on oil from the turbulent Middle East. But now, the Senate appears poised to reject the principal ideas of each side for maximizing America's energy independence. In a form of mutually assured destruction, the central proposals for increasing both domestic energy production and conservation look doomed.

The Bush administration Monday released thousands of documents on its energy task force, showing that industry groups provided substantial input in drafting the president's energy plan. In putting out 11,000 pages of documents before a midnight deadline, the Energy Department gave new ammunition to critics of the administration's energy policy, who say it is tilted in favor of the coal, gas, oil and nuclear industries.

The Senate approved a bill Thursday that would revamp the nation's energy policy, paving the way for talks with the House on one of President Bush's domestic priorities. The bill is a mix of relatively modest steps geared more toward promoting conservation and the use of alternative power sources. The House bill, taking its cue from Bush, is tilted more toward increasing production.

In a memo to Vice President Dick Cheney two weeks before a major policy reversal, lobbyist and former Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour urged the Bush White House to adopt a pro-industry stance on carbon dioxide emissions from coal-burning power plants. "A moment of truth is arriving," Barbour wrote Cheney on March 1, 2001, in a two-page document on his lobbying firm letterhead that was copied to top White House officials and three Cabinet secretaries.

Within days, Congress will launch a debate that could lead to the most thorough overhaul of U.S. energy policy since the oil shortages and price spikes of the 1970s. Spurred by California's power problems and lesser energy shocks in other parts of the country, lawmakers of both parties say momentum is growing to consider a wide range of legislative remedies.

Calling California's power panic a wake-up call for the nation, Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton said Thursday that the crisis justifies the need to expand efforts to extract oil, gas and coal from public lands. "I think the energy problems in California are a reality check for a lot of people," Norton said. "People are realizing that we need to plan ahead to have the energy resources available for the long term.