Statement of Congressman John D. Dingell, Ranking Member
Committee on Energy and Commerce

COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE MARKUP
TO CONSIDER H.RES. 745, A RESOLUTION OF INQUIRY REGARDING
THE CHENEY ENERGY TASK FORCE

September 15, 2004

Mr. Chairman, this is really a very simple resolution, and before we get into a debate over politics, let’s look at what it says. It calls upon the Administration to provide a list of names of individuals who served on the Vice President’s Energy Task Force, the names of people with whom the Task Force met, and the costs of the Task Force. That is all.

Early in 2001, President Bush asked Vice President Cheney to develop a national energy policy. Congressman Waxman and I asked the Vice President to tell us who his Task Force was meeting with. The General Accounting Office (GAO), at our request, asked similar information.

We were told by the Vice President’s lawyer to mind our own business, and that the public had no right to the information. We were told that somehow the Vice President could not receive advice from outsiders if he had to tell us who he met with. I found this surprising. This committee has held numerous public hearings on energy. I have never found that any of our witnesses were reluctant to provide their views in public.

Ultimately, the GAO was required to go to court to seek the information. Here are some excerpts of what the Comptroller General told Congress when he went to court:

"Clearly, the formulation and oversight of energy policy and the investigation of Enron-related activities represent important institutional prerogatives of the Congress. . . . Failure to provide the information we are seeking serves to undercut the important principles of transparency and accountability in government. These principles are important elements of a democracy. . . . This will be the first time that GAO has filed suit to enforce our access rights against a federal official. We hope it is the last time we will have to do so."

Unfortunately, a District Court judge appointed by President Bush denied GAO’s request, effectively saying it is up to Congress to demand the information. I don’t agree with the decision, but now we must act.

Why is this information important? Here is an example: Throughout 2001, Vice President Cheney contended that skyrocketing electricity charges on the West Coast were the result of inadequate supplies, not market manipulation. As a result, his energy policy contained no penalties for fraudulent practices. Instead, it repealed the consumer and investor protections in the Public Utility Holding Company Act.

When the Enron scandal was revealed in the fall of 2001, people began to ask about the role of Enron in the development of the energy policy. We learned that there were over 40 meetings between Enron and White House officials, including several involving the Vice President and Enron CEO Ken Lay. Shouldn’t that have been important information in evaluating the Vice President’s false claims that the West Coast energy crisis was about supplies, and not manipulation?

The last time this Committee dealt with a resolution of inquiry was in 1979, when the Republican Minority Leader John Rhodes introduced a resolution to obtain energy information from the Secretary of Energy. As a subcommittee chairman, I immediately requested the information from the Secretary, we received the information, and the committee then disposed of the resolution on a bipartisan basis.

There is no reason, other than politics, that we cannot do the same today. Here is what our former Chairman and friend from Louisiana said in a television interview on February 3, 2002, when asked whether the Administration should turn over the information:

"Well, let me take a point. They're concerned that they should have a right to have task forces to come in and give them information, and there's some logic to defending that proposition legally and from the inquiries of Congress or anyone else. On the other hand, I was one of those who joined with many of my Republican colleagues in saying to Mrs. Clinton, ‘Tell us everything about your task force on health,’ and they eventually did disclose a lot of that information. I suspect the same thing is going to happen here. The President and Vice President are going to disclose more and more of this information simply as a political matter. It's a right thing to do, and I think they're going to do it eventually."

The Chairman was wrong in his prediction, but correct that it is the right thing to do. Let’s do it.

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(Contact: Jodi Seth, 202-225-3641)