If you would like to see a good example of how Congressman Chris Shays so often manages to have it both ways, take a close look at his vote on the Capps Amendment to this year's Energy Bill (HR 6, Roll Call 129 on April 21).
The Capps Amendment would have prevented Tom DeLay from giving producers of the gasoline additive MTBE total immunity from causing widespread groundwater pollution. Despite having publicly criticized DeLay just days before, Mr. Shays turned around and voted to protect DeLay's favorite industrial polluters and some of his biggest corporate campaign contributors. Then he reversed himself and voted against the final bill. The key point is that the vote on the Capps Amendment was very close and DeLay needed his vote to get it through; the final vote on the Energy Bill, however, wasn't close, so DeLay freed Mr. Shays to vote against it as if he were a friend of the environment. In the end, Mr. Shays delivered a gift to Tom DeLay, saddled taxpayers with tens of billions of dollars in clean-up costs and handed $14 billion in tax subsidies to the MTBE producers. But Mr. Shays can return home to Fairfield County and tell his constituents that he stood up for the environment by voting "against" the Energy Bill. That's having it both ways.
MTBE is a chemical added to gasoline to improve performance that, even in small amounts, causes nausea, headaches, eye irritation and disorientation. It is also a likely carcinogen, having caused cancer in laboratory animals. Though oil company executives and engineers knew for years that MTBE was dangerous and that it quickly leached into wells and ground water, they actively pushed the government to require its use. Although Connecticut finally banned the sale of gasoline with MTBE in January 2004, MTBE-oxygenated gasoline continues to be sold in many states and it continues to pollute an increasing portion of America's drinking water. It has been found in hundreds of wells in Connecticut and in the Thames River and Connecticut River valleys. In an effort to force MTBE producers to pay cleanup costs and restore clean drinking water, several Connecticut towns and entities, including the Columbia Board of Education, the Horace Porter School, the Town of East Hampton, American Distilling and Mfg. Company, and United Water Connecticut, have brought lawsuits against MTBE producers. According to the American Water Works Association, cleaning up MTBE pollution nationwide will cost at least $29 billion. Not only will DeLay's legislation shield MTBE producers, most of which are located in DeLay's native Texas, from cleanup costs, it will also hand them $14 billion in taxpayer subsidies to compensate for having to eventually cease production of the additive. The bill also permits the federal government to override state bans on the additive, meaning that not only will more than 1,500 lawsuits be thrown out, including those in Connecticut, but that Washington could force MTBE-oxygenated gas to be reintroduced into Connecticut and other states.
Fellow Texan Congressman Joe Barton (R- Texas) called the vote on the MTBE amendment "a surrogate vote on Tom DeLay." In other words, if you support DeLay, prove it by voting against the Capps Amendment. That is precisely what Mr. Shays did. He was the only member of the Connecticut delegation to vote against the amendment, which carried by the extremely narrow margin of only six votes (219-213). Of course, Shays's vote wasn't needed to ensure oil drilling in ANWR or the Energy Bill's final passage, both of which passed by comfortable margins. So Tom DeLay released Mr. Shays to cast his "pro-environment" vote against its passage and to trumpet his environmental credentials to his constituents in Fairfield County. In reality, of course, he bailed out industrial polluters who have spoiled drinking water across the state of Connecticut.
