Mr. Speaker, as the Ranking Member of the House conferees on the energy bill, I must note that the title is misleading. Other than a ceremonial meeting of the conference at the beginning and a perfunctory meeting yesterday that produced no real change in the bill, I along with all of my Democratic colleagues have been excluded from all meetings of the conferees.

The conference on this bill has not reflected well on this institution. Questions began early when the Senate decided to pass last year's energy bill, and then ignore its contents. Since the conference began, Democratic conferees were not invited to any substantive discussions. We have been forced to read the papers to find out what is in the bill.

I want the record to be clear on the role accorded the Minority in this process. Democrats were only provided drafts of certain titles of the bill at the same time they were made available to the public. Democratic staff made comments, but any significant recommendations were ignored. I suspect the comments of lobbyists were met with far more success.

With regard to the most controversial provisions of the bill - relating to electricity, ethanol, and taxes - Democrats were never allowed to even see any drafts until Saturday. We had no input on these matters. This rule waives the 3-day layover rule for conference reports - yet one more attempt to prevent Members of this body from reviewing the bill.

My Republican colleagues have decided to totally ignore any rules on scope. For example, there are amendments to the Clean Air Act that were in neither bill. They have salted the report with dozens of other special interest provisions, many of which were put in the tax title. Speaking of the tax title, it has now grown to $23 billion - nearly three times the amount requested by the Administration. So much for fiscal discipline.

We held a conference meeting yesterday that helped shed some light on the bill, but nothing more. The Senate adopted seven amendments on a bipartisan basis, but within minutes of beginning debate on those recommendations on the House side, my Republican colleagues moved to reject all but two provisions they had previously worked out, and without debate, the Senate then agreed.

I note that the conference report also includes a 139 page statement of the managers, nearly all of which relates to the tax portion. These pages on taxes were not made available to the conferees before the report was.

I am unable to support this bill for a number of substantive reasons, and will discuss them during the debate on the conference report. The bill is an assault on the Nation's environment - from rollbacks of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts to attacks on the Nation's rivers through abusive new provisions protecting hydroelectric utilities. The bill harms consumers and investors by repealing the Public Utility Holding Company Act and failing to address the abuses of Enron and other companies that gouged consumers in California and other states west of the Rockies. Finally, the bill includes massive unaffordable subsidies to industry that are unlikely to affect our energy needs.

I have worked on many comprehensive energy and environmental bills during my time in this Chamber. All of them were the result of extensive bipartisan cooperation. This is the first energy bill I have had to oppose, and I regret that we were not permitted to develop a bipartisan bill that will bring real benefits to all Americans.

Vote no on the previous question and no on the rule.