The Great Derangement - Matt Taibbi [22]
The bill also included a measure against price gouging, which at the time was a hot-button issue, as gas consumers were being hit hard by opportunistic energy suppliers after the storm. But the Barton price-gouging measure affected only retailers and not suppliers, and the only penalty was a one-time $11,000 fine. In other words, Barton’s bill punished the owners of small individual mom-and-pop gas stations for price gouging but specifically exempted the large oil companies from the same offense.
The bill also contained no clear definition of what price gouging was. It had no teeth or meaning. High-sounding meaningless bullshit: the currency of congressional public relations.
Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak, a member of Barton’s committee, tried to force language into the bill that would have made oil companies subject to price-gouging regulations, but Barton, again doing his job, managed to keep the Stupak language out.
The resulting bill ended up being so completely irrelevant to its alleged emergency function with regard to Hurricane Katrina that even the habitually degraded minority members of Barton’s committee permitted themselves a rare spontaneous public outburst, protesting that the leadership had really gone too far this time. Their frustration resulted in a priceless witness-congressman exchange during the markup process, in which the committee all but admitted that the so-called emergency bill had nothing to do with any emergency.
At the end of the markup process, the members of the committee of jurisdiction are allowed to question the committee counsel about the legal implications of the bill. The majority-picked lawyer essentially testifies to what the law means.
Here, California representative Henry Waxman interrogates Tom DiLenge, Barton’s squirrelly committee counsel, about the Gasoline for America’s Security Act. Specifically, he is asking about the repeal of the new source review provision of the Clean Air Act.
WAXMAN: Well, let me ask you specifically. Would it apply to chemical plants?
DILENGE: It is a stationary source, yes, sir.
WAXMAN: Would it apply to large manufacturing plants, iron and steel plants?
DILENGE: If emitting the pollutants, yes, sir.
WAXMAN: Okay. Would this apply to large pulp and paper mills?
DILENGE: Yes.
WAXMAN: Coal-fired power plants?
DILENGE: Yes.
WAXMAN: It seems to me that this would apply to every industrial facility with high pollution levels…
Waxman asks about the geographic parameters of the bill, then gets around to asking his main question—what does any of this have to do with either gasoline or the hurricane?
WAXMAN: So this would help a pulp or paper mill in North Carolina to expand and increase its air pollution without installing modern control technology. How does that address the harm done by Katrina? It wouldn’t do that.
DILENGE: Well, I’m not sure that I would characterize the first part of your sentence that way. What it does is—
WAXMAN: No. Does it affect the harm done by Katrina?
DILENGE (after a long pause, biting lip): It…does not exclude the harm done by Katrina.
WAXMAN: It doesn’t just affect the—it is not related to the harm done by Katrina?
DILENGE: That is correct.
WAXMAN: Okay. And how would this provision affect gasoline prices?
DILENGE: I’m not sure I’m qualified to answer that question.
This exchange took place just days before Barton carried his bill to the Rules Committee. Nothing came of it, of course; there is no technical knockout system in Congress, under which a bill dies if its proponents happen to admit in public to its being bullshit.
WHEN THE MARKUP PROCESS was finished, Barton trotted to the Rules Committee,