One Month Into His Term: How My Texas Congressman Has Voted

Well Congressman Nick Lampson of Texas CD 22 has been in office for a little over a month now and maybe we need to see a tally of votes on passage so far.

Here is how my congressman has voted so far.

H.J.RES.20: Voted Aye to make further continuing appropriations for the fiscal year 2007, and for other purposes.

HR 475: Voted Aye to revise the composition of the House of Representatives Page Board to equalize the number of members representing the majority and minority parties and to include a member representing the parents of pages and a member representing former pages, and for other purposes.

HR 6: Voted No to reduce our Nation's dependency on foreign oil by investing in clean, renewable, and alternative energy resources, promoting new emerging energy technologies, developing greater efficiency, and creating a Strategic Energy Efficiency and Renewables Reserve to invest in alternative energy, and for other purposes.

(er . . . no?)

HR 5: Voted Aye to amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 to reduce interest rates for student borrowers.

HR 4: Voted Aye to amend part D of title XVIII of the Social Security Act to require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate lower covered part D drug prices on behalf of Medicare beneficiaries.

HR 3: Voted Aye to amend the Public Health Service Act to provide for human embryonic stem cell research.

HR 2: Voted Aye to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to provide for an increase in the Federal minimum wage.

HR 1: Voted Aye to provide for the implementation of the recommendations of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.

Election of the Speaker: Voted Pelosi.

So what is the score you ask? Well according to the Half Empty Analysis of Progressivism Index(or HEAP Index) Nick scores an 85.71 out of a total of 98.4. Well that sure beats the HEAP Index of the preceeding congresswoman, 28.5 out of 124.9, or the one that preceeded her, 0 out of 0 (vacant seat), or the one that preceeded the vacant seat: -127.35 out of 258.8. Yes the HEAP Index has no point of reference at all.

I can get behind each and every one of those votes that Nick cast but one. HR 6. Nick voted no with three other Democrats: John Barrow (D-Savannah, GA), Dan Boren (D-Paden, OK) and Jim Marshall (D-Macon, GA). It passed, but now I have to ask myself this: is Nick going to be voting energy issues that constantly favor the oil industry?

In his statements about renewable resources Nick makes the point that our long-term goal is toward development biofuels technology and bringing technology online that makes use of renewable resources, but that we must not lose sight of short-term needs.

And recall that during the campaign, Nick actively urged his former colleagues to kill a house bill that would have, in turn, killed funding for the RPSEA consortium that would fund research into ultra deepwater oil and gas exploration and production. That this funding comes from the public trough, and benefits private industry is only half the issue. The other half is that oil and gas companies find themselves flush with cash, and can easily fund their own research.

I personally like Nick, I voted for him, I walked the steamy streets of Sugar Land, Missouri City and surrounding unincorporated areas in July and August last year pounding on doors for him.

But what IS it with this flirtation with big oil?

Welcome Back View from Twenty-Two!!

You don't know what you've got until it is gone. Isn't that the truth?

Our friend Mark had an incredibly funny and erudite blog, but then he went back to Law School, got pulled in by the pain and pressure of his dictatorial professors. And he shut down his very popular website View From 22.

This evening, he sent this email to me "My first blog post in a long time..." and it left me in stitches. Mark, my friend, welcome back and stick around. Things are very interesting.

Mark's back (I hope). He's back to give Nick Lampson a headache (I hope). I walked miles and miles for Nick. Called and called. We need to keep his feet to the fire (I hope).

Nick, in March 2006 you held a press conference on the steps of Sugar Land City Hall, presenting Americans with a payment due notice. Imagine what we could have done with the oil and gas royalties to pay down the debt that Tom DeLay and his cronies heaped on us, our children, and our grandchildren. But no. Instead, those funds are going to go to ultra deepwater conventional oil and gas R&D that would normally have been taken care of - in a bygone time - by Oil and Gas company profits. When I worked in the O&G industry, I watched as they gutted their R&D departments in cost cutting strategies. Now that cost cutting is no longer an issue, the R&D is going to be taken care of with PUBLIC FUNDING?

Nick, that is the essence of obscene.

Nick, I know that you can't take back the pork once it is delivered, but can you please stop it now?

Bringing Home the Bacon or Why Oil Companies Can Now Cut Back on Their R&D Budgets

Yesterday FortBendNow headlined that Nick Lampson (D-Stafford) was going to announce that a $375 M 10-year DOE contract would be signed today to fund ultra-deepwater oil and gas exploration and production research. The benefiting consortium is the non-profit Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America group that is headquartered in Sugar Land. As a matter of fact, they share an address with their host, the Texas Energy Center: 1650 State Highway 6, Sugar Land.

The Texas Energy Center was specifically set up to take advantage of expected government funding. As seen in this article written over three years ago in The Houston Business Journal.

“Organizers are working feverishly to snare $6.6 million in matching state funds and at least 30 percent of $2.1 billion of federal funds expected to be appropriated by Congress for research into deep and ultra deep drilling.”

The TEC is a consortium of Energy Companies that include Greater Houston Partnership, CenterPoint Energy, Fluor Corp., ONDEO/Nalco, the Greater Fort Bend Economic Development Council, Halliburton and plenty more (just look at the list of board members).

The Austin Chronicle reported another influx of state funds for the TEC last September:

“The TEC has received $3.6 million from Gov. Rick Perry's economic development slush fund and is guaranteed federal funding over the next decade”.

Now here are my questions:

1. Why are state and federal dollars being funneled into this one organization?
   
2. Have not the oil and gas companies amassed record profits in the past year?


3. Have not these same companies promised that they would reinvest these profits in finding ways to develop new technologies, especially in frontier areas like the ultra-deep water?

Is someone pulling a fast one?

The whole thing is the brain-child of, are you ready, Tom DeLay (R-Nowhere), who, in the grand tradition of earmarks and porkbarrel spending, inserted the provision in an energy bill after committee conference on it was closed.

The bill passed.

But early in February 2005, the Bush administration called

“…on Congress to repeal the Energy Policy Act provision subsidizing energy companies' research into deepwater drilling. The President is looking forward to Congress taking about $2 billion of these tax breaks out of the budget over a 10-year period of time.”

“With oil prices at record levels, energy companies have large cash flows - and energy companies should reinvest their profits into expanding refining capacity, researching alternative energy sources, developing new technologies, and expanding production.”

This link, on the same subject is courtesy of Susan.

This prompted Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) along with 27 others, including Edward Markey (D-Mass) who introduced his own bill as well, to introduce HR 5300, the Energy Fairness for America Act on May 4th, 2006.

Section 5 of this Act contained stipulations that would terminate certain provisions of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, including Tom DeLay’s added provisions:

“(6) Subtitle J of title IX (relating to ultra-deepwater and unconventional natural gas and other petroleum resources).”

The bill was first referred to the House Ways and Means Committee, then the House Resources Committee, then the House Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, then the House Science Committee, then the House Science, Subcommittee on Energy.

And there, it died.

Hey, you know, Congressman Al Green (CD 9) sits on that committee. And hey, wasn’t that also Nick Lampson’s committee before he was turned out in ’04? Markey's bill? He just tried to get tax breaks in the Energy Policy Act terminated. It died in committee, too.

Bob Dunn, in today’s excellent coverage of this, reports that Nick was instrumental in getting the bill killed.

“Melanie Kenderdine, vice president of the Gas Technology Institute and a RPSEA board member, said Lampson was instrumental in rescuing the DOE program in May 2006, when Markey offered an amendment in Congress to kill the project.” She said Lampson, who was campaigning for the seat he ultimately won in CD-22, took time out to “educate his past and future colleagues” in the House about the benefits that would accrue from the project RPSEA now will manage.”

“ ‘When I found out there were no limits to what could be done with this research money, it was easy for me to contact Markey…,’ Lampson said. ‘I was able to get them to understand it was not just an oil subsidy…’ ”

Nick Lampson also claims that this will not cost the taxpayers one cent.

“Money for the research contracts will come from a trust fund set up by the federal Office of Management and Budget, which itself is funded by royalties paid to the government by oil and gas producers using federal land”.

Waitaminute. Those royalties are paid by oil companies so they can drill and produce on the Federal government’s land. OUR land. Those royalties should be reserved for the people: education, health, student loans, subsidizing Indian Casinos.

The profits made in the past year by oil companies are obscene. Fully integrated oil companies like ExxonMobil get it at both ends: high crude prices and high gasoline prices. They justify these obscene profits by saying that the cost of drilling in deepwater and frontier areas is steadily increasing, and they need to develop new technologies to get it done.

So now, the oil companies can keep more of their profits for corporate executive bonus plans. The royalties that they have to pay to us, US, are going back to the R&D efforts that they don’t have to pay for any more.

Well it’s only been a week, and Nick has found a way to bring the bacon (a form of pork) home to Sugar Land. That should get local detractors salivating, but you know, there still are people in Fort Bend County who don’t even look at an incumbent if there is a D next to his name.

Susan has a take on this that is more to the point, I think.