House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi supports T. Boone Pickens’ Nat Gas Act, the crony capitalism measure now before Congress that creates tax credits worth billions to a company that connects the two financially.
Or does she?
Under the headline “Pelosi’s conflict of interest in the natural gas bill,” The Washington Examiner said in its Monday editorial:
“Taxpayers should look askance at any measure that puts money in the pockets of Pelosi or any other lawmaker who owns stock in the Clean Energy Fuels Corp. because it is impossible to know whether their advocacy is grounded in facts and logic, or the effect passage would have on their checkbooks and stock portfolios.”
The measure in question is the New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions Act — the Nat Gas Act.
It creates billions of dollars in tax credits for converting trucks, buses and other heavy-duty vehicles from diesel fuel to natural gas.
Also included among much else are tax credits for construction of service stations to keep the vehicles on the road.
Coincidentally, the CEFC specializes in natural gas conversions and service station fueling equipment. The firm is so dependent on federal tax credits that its stock shot up 15 percent last November when a Senate version of the Nat Gas Act appeared.
Still, The Washington Examiner editorial gave Drew Hammill, Pelosi’s spokesman, heartburn because, as he explained in an email Monday, “the problem with your piece is that she opposes the bill you are talking about.”
Hammill helpfully added that when Roll Call asked about the issue several months ago, he said this:
“Leader Pelosi opposes the larger Nat Gas legislation in its current form because she doesn’t believe we need to subsidize natural gas at this level given that it is so plentiful. The legislation is a very large subsidy of up to $9 billion.
“In our Make It In America initiative, we included a much smaller portion of the NAT GAS Act — only costing $1.4 billion — to make investments so that we have a tax credit for heavy natural gas vehicles AND heavy hybrid vehicles.”
(A spokesman for Rep. John Sullivan, R-Okla., who is the main Nat Gas Act sponsor, said the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates the bill’s cost at $3.8 billion.)
Go to the website of “Nancy Pelosi Democratic Leader” and there you find dozens of entries describing “a legislative initiative of House Democrats” and “a cross-section of the legislation in the Make It In America agenda for the 112th Congress.”
Among the entries is this one:
“New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions (NAT GAS) Act (Reps. Sullivan, Boren, Larson, and Brady, H.R. 1380): Provides incentives to encourage private investment in natural gas refueling infrastructure and the production and purchasing of natural gas vehicles and trucks.”
That entry perhaps explains why the New York Times reported in a Dec. 15, 2011, story focused on congressional conflicts of interest that “earlier this year, [Pelosi] listed the Nat Gas Act as one of the priorities for her ‘Make It in America’ agenda.”
Note that there is no indication on the website that Pelosi now opposes this bill, thus possibly accounting for an exceedingly rare instance of the New York Times reporting staff reaching the same conclusion as the editorial page of The Washington Examiner.
The Pelosi website does say that the Democrats’ agenda is “evolving.” Evolution apparently is how Pelosi can oppose a bill her spokesman claims cost $9 billion for tax credits that CEFC officials say are critical to the company’s future while backing another one that costs $1.4 billion in such tax credits.
Either way, CEFC benefits from “manipulation of the tax code” by Washington politicians, including Pelosi, who owns up to $100,000 of the company’s stock, according to her annual financial disclosure reports.
Pelosi, who was speaker of the House at the time, and her husband “got in on the ground floor at Clean Energy, purchasing shares in an auction when Mr. Pickens publicly launched the company on May 25, 2007,” according to the Wall Street Journal in 2008.
Four years later, the Pelosi duo wins if either bill becomes law. It’s another example of why The Washington Examiner editorial called on “Pelosi and any other member who own stocks or other interests in firms that would materially benefit from legislation before Congress” to recuse themselves from such matters.
It’s the least they can do to avoid real or apparent conflicts of interest that undermine public confidence in Congress.
Mark Tapscott is editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner.
