John McCain says Barack Obama has it all wrong. It was Obama, after all, who sided with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney on the 2005 Energy Bill. McCain voted against the bill. Here’s McCain today in Ohio:
I spoke up against the administration and Congress and Sen. Obama when they gave us an energy bill with more than giveaways to big oil and really no solution to our energy problems. . . . I want to take a minute here on this issue ’cause I think Sen. Obama might be a little bit confused. Yesterday he accused me of having President Bush’s policies on energy. That’s odd because he voted for the president’s energy bill and I voted against it.
Confusing, eh? The Republican candidate is accusing his Democratic rival of being like a Republican president. But there is a silver lining: The charge gives us an excuse to go back to the past, to June 28, 2005, when the two Senators explained their votes on the bill in press releases.
Said McCain at the time: “The bill contains numerous provisions that will distort competitive markets for energy through subsidies, tax breaks, special projects, mandates and outlandish amounts of federal spending, and it is unlikely to have any positive short-term effect on energy prices.” He was particularly upset about the mandates for ethanol, which he worried would increase fuel costs. So he voted no.
In a way, Obama voted yes for the same reasons. The Obama press release is notable for its embrace of the same things that McCain didn’t like. Of course, Obama comes from a state with lots of ethanol and coal production, two industries the benefited greatly from the bill. (For more on Obama’s closeness with the ethanol industry, see here. For more on his relations with coal industry, see here.) Obama also liked the earmarks–er, pork–that the bill would bring to his state. From the Obama release:
The Energy bill will do the following:
– Create a Renewable Fuels Standard that will nearly double the amount of ethanol used by 2012.
– Provide up to a $30,000 tax credit for the construction of E85 ethanol fueling stations.
– Provide a $1.8 billion tax credit for investments in clean-coal facilities.
– Provide $85 million to Southern Illinois University, Purdue University, and the University of Kentucky for research and testing on developing Illinois basin coal into transportation fuels.
– Provide $40 million for research on combined plug-in hybrid and E85 flexible fuel vehicles that have the potential to drive 500 miles per gallon of gasoline used.
– Provide incentives to promote biofuels from agricultural resources.
Here is a roll call of the final vote on the Conference Report, which was 74 yeas and 26 nays. Among the Democrats who joined McCain in opposing the “Bush-Cheney” bill: Dodd, Schumer, Boxer, Biden, Corzine, Clinton, Reed, Reid, Schumer, Kerry, Kennedy, Feinstein and Wyden.