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Says one congressional leader: "They are in a mood to do something, and they don't give a damn what it is. If they thought the Lord's Prayer dealt with energy, they would probably re-enact it. If they thought it did not apply to energy, they would probably oppose it."
A rundown on Capitol Hill action:
¶ The House Ways and Means Committee approved a tougher tax or oil-company "windfall" profits than Jimmy Carter had proposed. The President's plan would have let oil companies keep 29¢ to 34¢ of each extra dollar in profit that they make from the decontrol of domestic oil prices that Carter began June 1. The Ways and Means bill reduces the figure to between 17¢ and 23¢. It is likely to be watered down in the Senate, and end about where Carter wanted it.
¶ Congressional Democratic leaders at a White House breakfast told Carter that they are uniting behind a plan offered by Representative Toby Moffett of Connecticut to force every driver to choose one day a week on which he would leave his car or cars in the garage (windshield stickers would identify the forbidden day). They also invited Carter to work with them in devising a new gas-rationing plan. Said House Democratic Whip John Brademas of Indiana: "In effect, we told the President, 'The train is leaving the station; would you like to get aboard?' "
¶ A consensus is building behind the idea of setting up a Government funding for a crash effort to produce synthetic fuels in the U.S., even if other nations will not go along. A House education and labor subcommittee last week approved a synthetic-fuels bill, blandly ignoring the fact that it has no jurisdiction in the matter. Chairman Henry ("Scoop") Jackson called the Senate Energy Committee together at the unheard-of hour of 7 a.m. last Wednesday to start work on his own synthetic-fuels bill. Said Scoop: "People who never saw the sun rise are now getting up before dawn to buy gasoline. We are getting started a little later than that." Both House and Senate leaders are promising floor votes on synthetic-fuels bills in July The leading possibility is a House proposal to have the Government guarantee a market and a price tc synthetic-fuels makers al a cost of $2 billion a year.
That would be a start in the right direction, as would the proposal that President Carter announced last week to make more money available for development of solar energy. The nation does need to push production of alternate forms of energy, to reduce its debilitating dependence on unpredictable and outrageously priced oil supplies from OPEC. But neither solar power nor synthetic fuels will help much to shorten gasoline lines, or to keep homes warm, for years to come.