Re-Energized

IN THE WAKE OF the filibuster deal, will bipartisanship prove contagious? We won't raise our hopes too high, but last week we did witness another example of what can be achieved with a little harmony between parties. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved, by a vote of 21 to 1 , a new version of the long-suffering energy bill. The bill still hands out too many subsidies to too many industries, contains too many slices of pork and doesn't deal with the most obvious potential source of energy savings, namely automobile fuel efficiency. Nevertheless, it is worth understanding why the bill, which caused so much acrimony last time around that it did not make it through the Senate at all, attracted so much support from both parties.

Partly, the explanation was what one minority staff member called a "dramatically different" process. Instead of writing the bill themselves and then telling Democrats to take it or leave it, Republican leaders conferred continuously with Democratic senators and their staffs. Debates were genuine: Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), committee chairman, actually lost one or two of them. Time was spent reaching compromises on previously irreconcilable issues and "co-writing" the law. As a result, about a quarter of the legislative language is new, according to Senate staffers.

The bill is also saner on its merits. The pork is still there but has been "streamlined," in the words of one staff member. Unlike House members, senators did not go out of their way to create multiple exemptions to environmental laws. The electricity title reflects what both parties say is genuine compromise, rather than merely contradictory language. The committee also dropped the most controversial part of last year's bill, which would have cut short a lawsuit against the producers of methyl tertiary-butyl ether, or MTBE, a gasoline additive that poisons drinking water. Last year this provision led both Republican senators from New Hampshire to vote against the bill, thereby keeping it from passing.

The bill may acquire worse features during Senate consideration. More importantly, it also has to be reconciled with the House, which, given the enormous differences between the House and Senate versions of the legislation, as well as the enormous differences in attitudes, will be difficult if not impossible. But compromise is always difficult -- which is why the House should look to the Senate for an example of how it can be made to work.