Electricity Needs Rules and Oversight Now (ENRON) Act

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce 2 pieces of electricity legislation--simple, common-sense bills that enjoy the bipartisan support of a majority of United States Senators.

First, I am pleased to introduce with my colleagues Senators Clinton, Jeffords and Feingold the Electric Reliability Act of 2004. This legislation would give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) authority to devise a system of mandatory and enforceable standards for the reliable operation of our nation's electricity grid.

My distinguished friends from Wisconsin and Vermont, Senators Feingold and Jeffords, and I are also

today introducing a second bill: the Electricity Needs Rules and Oversight Now (ENRON) Act, which would put in place a blanket ban on manipulative practices in our nation's electricity markets.

Enactment of these bills is long overdue. And in both cases, their provisions have passed the United States Senate within the past eight months. They represent crucial steps forward in the effort to modernize our nation's electricity grid and reform the rules by which it is operated.

Quite simply, these provisions are too important to be held captive to the majority's effort to pass H.R. 6-- the energy bill conference report. Resembling a patchwork quilt of special interest hand-outs-- rather than a policy that would help this nation achieve energy independence--H.R. 6 capsized under its own pork-laden weight on this very floor, a mere two months ago.

Rather than holding good energy policy hostage for the bad--as those who seek to resurrect that 1,700-page legislative monstrosity have said they intend--I believe this body can and must make necessary progress in upgrading our electricity grid and protecting our nation's consumers. That's what the two bills I'm introducing today are intended to do.

As surely my colleagues recall, much of the Northeast and Midwest last August suffered a massive power outage, affecting 50 million consumers from New York to Michigan. Clearly, the biggest blackout in our nation's history has underscored the need for mandatory and enforceable reliability standards--as envisioned in the Electric Reliability Act of 2004. To date, the system has operated under a set of voluntary guidelines, with no concrete penalties for those who break the rules and jeopardize the reliable energy service that is the foundation of our nation's economy.

While the August 2003 blackout was certainly a potent reminder, the call for reliability legislation dates back at least another five years. In 1997, both a Task Force established by the Clinton Administration's Department of Energy and a blue ribbon panel formed by the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) determined that reliability rules for our nation's electric system had to be made mandatory and enforceable.

These conclusions resulted, in part, from an August 1996 blackout in the Western Interconnection, where the short-circuit of two overloaded transmission lines near Portland, Oregon, caused a sweeping outage that knocked out power for up to 16 hours in ten states. The blackout affected 7.5 million consumers from Idaho to California, resulting in the automatic shut-down of 15 large thermal nuclear generating plants in California and the southwest--compromising the West's energy supply for several days, even after power had mostly been restored to end- users.

As outlined in Economic Impacts of Infrastructure Failures, a 1997 report submitted to the President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection, the blackout was estimated to exact between $1 billion and $4 billion in direct and indirect costs to utilities, industry and consumers. The report also detailed the risks the outage posed to public health and safety, including an exponential increase in traffic accidents, hospitals forced to rely on emergency back-up power generation, and the grounding of more than 2,000 airline passengers.

While it took time to develop consensus, the Senate recognized the human and economic stakes associated with the reliable operation of the electricity grid. Stand-alone legislation very similar to what I've introduced today passed this body in June 2000, when this chamber was under Republican control. And even as the majority has twice changed hands since then, the United States Senate has twice passed the very provisions included in the Electric Reliability Act of 2004 as part of comprehensive energy legislation--most recently, this past summer.

Likewise, the Senate has previously passed the provisions contained in the ENRON Act, which Senator Feingold and I are introducing today. Offered under the agreement that last July cleared the way for Senate Leadership to replace the then-pending Republican energy bill with the 107th Congress' Daschle-Bingaman legislation, the ENRON Act was adopted as an amendment to the Senate's Fiscal Year 2004 Agriculture Appropriations bill, on a strong, bipartisan vote of 57-40.

The ENRON Act is simple in concept. In the face of overwhelming evidence that Enron and other unscrupulous energy companies brazenly manipulated western energy markets during the crisis of 2000-2001, it would amend the Federal Power Act to put in place a blanket ban on such activities.

It has been estimated that the western energy crisis cost the region's consumers and businesses $35 billion in domestic economic product--in other words, a 1.5 percent decline in productivity and a total loss of 589,000 jobs. After experiencing a devastating blow that exacerbated the already-crippling national recession, consumers in my state--who continue to pay the price for the unethical gamesmanship of these companies--know that our economy simply cannot abide another Enron.

Thus, the ENRON Act is based on language included in the Securities Exchange Act--in existence since 1934. This bill would make it illegal for any company to ``use or employ . . . any manipulative or deceptive device or contrivance'' to circumvent FERC rules and regulations on market manipulation. Further, it would specify that electricity rates resulting from manipulative practices are simply not lawful. In other words, when companies are known to have gouged consumers--in some cases, even admitting as much--those same consumers should not be stuck with the inflated energy bills that result.

As Congress and various Federal agencies have over the past few years sought to piece together the events that led to the western energy crisis--the most devastating energy market meltdown in our Nation's history--a number of agencies and officials have weighed in on the issue of market manipulation. In addition to simple common sense, their statements underscore the need for the ENRON Act. For example: FERC in March 2003 issued its Final Report on Price Manipulation in Western Markets. The voluminous FERC report found that: ``Enron's corporate culture fostered a disregard for the American energy customer; the success of the company's trading strategies, while temporary, demonstrates the need for explicit prohibitions on harmful and fraudulent market behavior and for aggressive market monitoring and enforcement.'' The General Accounting Office (GAO) in August 2003 issued a report entitled Additional Actions Would Help Ensure that FERC's Oversight and Enforcement Capability is Comprehensive and Systematic. Among GAO's observations: ``The heads of [FERC's] market monitoring units told us they recognize the difficulty of defining just and reasonable prices. They also said that they believe FERC has made some progress in doing so. However, they generally believed that FERC had not yet gone far enough.'' GAO further concluded that: ``we recommend that the Chairman of FERC more clearly define [the Commissions] role in overseeing the Nation's energy markets by . . . explicitly [describing FERC's] activities relative to carrying out the agency's statutory requirements to ensure just and reasonable prices and to preventing market manipulation.'' Republican FERC Commissioner Joe Kelliher wrote the following in a November 5 letter to me, just prior to his confirmation: ``Markets subject to manipulation cannot operate properly and there is an urgent need to proscribe manipulation of electricity markets. You have correctly noted there is no express prohibition of market manipulation in the Federal Power Act and have proposed legislation to establish an express prohibition. This is a critical point. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission only has the tools that Congress chooses to give it, and Congress has never given the Commission express authority to prohibit market manipulation. I believe the time has come for Congress to take that step.'' In the same letter, Kelliher goes on to note that, ``This is not to say that the Commission cannot take steps to prevent market manipulation under its existing legal authority . . . Since there would likely be legal challenges to any such effort to proscribe manipulative practices, it would be helpful for Congress to give the Commissioner clear

authority to prohibit market manipulation . . . I support the goals of your amendment'' [to the Agriculture Appropriations bill, which contains the same provisions as the ENRON Act] ``and believe it would go far towards effectively prohibiting manipulation of electricity markets.''

Recent events have clearly demonstrated the need for both the Electric Reliability Act of 2004, as well as the ENRON Act. On the other hand, the case is far less compelling for many of the provisions found in the H.R. 6 conference report. It's not just unpersuasive to argue that a 21st Century energy policy must include: liability protections for manufacturers of the groundwater pollutant MTBE; the weakening of landmark environmental laws such as the Clean Air, Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water Acts; and billions of dollars worth of subsidies, most infamously, taxpayer-backed bonds for construction of an energy efficient mall including a Hooters restaurant, it's absurd.

When the Senate last July agreed to send a comprehensive energy bill to conference with the House, few anticipated that we would get back a grab-bag of corporate give-aways so bloated that editorial pages from every corner of this Nation, from Yakima to Pensacola; Texarkana to Honolulu, would call on this body to put H.R. 6 out of its misery. Nor did many of us believe that common-sense legislation such as the ENRON Act--with broad, bipartisan support in the Senate--would be so quickly jettisoned by the conference report's authors.

Make no mistake: many of us in this chamber emphatically believe that we need an energy policy that will liberate this country from its dangerous dependence on foreign sources of oil and position our businesses to compete in the emerging global market for clean energy technologies. But to paraphrase my distinguished colleague from Vermont, Senator Jeffords, who has been a great leader on these issues, this Nation needs an energy bill, but certainly not this energy bill.

So today, we are introducing the Electric Reliability Act of 2004 and the ENRON Act, because it's time for this body to put the public interest ahead of the special interests poised to profit so handsomely from the passage of the energy bill conference report. We should take up and pass these individual pieces of legislation, which would mark a substantial achievement in the effort to upgrade the reliability of our Nation's grid and insulate our economy from the disastrous impacts of latter-day Enrons.

In last night's State of the Union speech, President Bush observed that ``consumers and businesses need reliable supplies of energy to make our economy run.'' I could not agree more. He also urged Congress to ``pass legislation to modernize our electricity system, promote conservation, and make America less dependent on foreign sources of energy.'' Nowhere in his address did President Bush mention tax breaks for Hooters; I did not hear him invoke rollback of environmental laws on behalf of polluters; nor did he cite the need to put in place protections for corporate looters such as Enron--all those provisions that have become the hallmark of the energy bill conference report.

So I ask my colleagues to recognize that we can make measurable progress this year on the objectives the President has outlined. But that will happen not by holding good energy policy hostage for bad energy policy, as the authors of H.R. 6 would have it. Rather, it will happen when we agree to set aside the H.R. 6 conference report and pass common-sense, consensus-based energy policy. And both the Electric Reliability and ENRON Acts fit this description.

I ask my colleagues to support these bills.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce 2 pieces of electricity legislation--simple, common-sense bills that enjoy the bipartisan support of a majority of United States Senators.

First, I am pleased to introduce with my colleagues Senators Clinton, Jeffords and Feingold the Electric Reliability Act of 2004. This legislation would give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) authority to devise a system of mandatory and enforceable standards for the reliable operation of our nation's electricity grid.

My distinguished friends from Wisconsin and Vermont, Senators Feingold and Jeffords, and I are also

today introducing a second bill: the Electricity Needs Rules and Oversight Now (ENRON) Act, which would put in place a blanket ban on manipulative practices in our nation's electricity markets.

Enactment of these bills is long overdue. And in both cases, their provisions have passed the United States Senate within the past eight months. They represent crucial steps forward in the effort to modernize our nation's electricity grid and reform the rules by which it is operated.

Quite simply, these provisions are too important to be held captive to the majority's effort to pass H.R. 6-- the energy bill conference report. Resembling a patchwork quilt of special interest hand-outs-- rather than a policy that would help this nation achieve energy independence--H.R. 6 capsized under its own pork-laden weight on this very floor, a mere two months ago.

Rather than holding good energy policy hostage for the bad--as those who seek to resurrect that 1,700-page legislative monstrosity have said they intend--I believe this body can and must make necessary progress in upgrading our electricity grid and protecting our nation's consumers. That's what the two bills I'm introducing today are intended to do.

As surely my colleagues recall, much of the Northeast and Midwest last August suffered a massive power outage, affecting 50 million consumers from New York to Michigan. Clearly, the biggest blackout in our nation's history has underscored the need for mandatory and enforceable reliability standards--as envisioned in the Electric Reliability Act of 2004. To date, the system has operated under a set of voluntary guidelines, with no concrete penalties for those who break the rules and jeopardize the reliable energy service that is the foundation of our nation's economy.

While the August 2003 blackout was certainly a potent reminder, the call for reliability legislation dates back at least another five years. In 1997, both a Task Force established by the Clinton Administration's Department of Energy and a blue ribbon panel formed by the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) determined that reliability rules for our nation's electric system had to be made mandatory and enforceable.

These conclusions resulted, in part, from an August 1996 blackout in the Western Interconnection, where the short-circuit of two overloaded transmission lines near Portland, Oregon, caused a sweeping outage that knocked out power for up to 16 hours in ten states. The blackout affected 7.5 million consumers from Idaho to California, resulting in the automatic shut-down of 15 large thermal nuclear generating plants in California and the southwest--compromising the West's energy supply for several days, even after power had mostly been restored to end- users.

As outlined in Economic Impacts of Infrastructure Failures, a 1997 report submitted to the President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection, the blackout was estimated to exact between $1 billion and $4 billion in direct and indirect costs to utilities, industry and consumers. The report also detailed the risks the outage posed to public health and safety, including an exponential increase in traffic accidents, hospitals forced to rely on emergency back-up power generation, and the grounding of more than 2,000 airline passengers.

While it took time to develop consensus, the Senate recognized the human and economic stakes associated with the reliable operation of the electricity grid. Stand-alone legislation very similar to what I've introduced today passed this body in June 2000, when this chamber was under Republican control. And even as the majority has twice changed hands since then, the United States Senate has twice passed the very provisions included in the Electric Reliability Act of 2004 as part of comprehensive energy legislation--most recently, this past summer.

Likewise, the Senate has previously passed the provisions contained in the ENRON Act, which Senator Feingold and I are introducing today. Offered under the agreement that last July cleared the way for Senate Leadership to replace the then-pending Republican energy bill with the 107th Congress' Daschle-Bingaman legislation, the ENRON Act was adopted as an amendment to the Senate's Fiscal Year 2004 Agriculture Appropriations bill, on a strong, bipartisan vote of 57-40.

The ENRON Act is simple in concept. In the face of overwhelming evidence that Enron and other unscrupulous energy companies brazenly manipulated western energy markets during the crisis of 2000-2001, it would amend the Federal Power Act to put in place a blanket ban on such activities.

It has been estimated that the western energy crisis cost the region's consumers and businesses $35 billion in domestic economic product--in other words, a 1.5 percent decline in productivity and a total loss of 589,000 jobs. After experiencing a devastating blow that exacerbated the already-crippling national recession, consumers in my state--who continue to pay the price for the unethical gamesmanship of these companies--know that our economy simply cannot abide another Enron.

Thus, the ENRON Act is based on language included in the Securities Exchange Act--in existence since 1934. This bill would make it illegal for any company to ``use or employ . . . any manipulative or deceptive device or contrivance'' to circumvent FERC rules and regulations on market manipulation. Further, it would specify that electricity rates resulting from manipulative practices are simply not lawful. In other words, when companies are known to have gouged consumers--in some cases, even admitting as much--those same consumers should not be stuck with the inflated energy bills that result.

As Congress and various Federal agencies have over the past few years sought to piece together the events that led to the western energy crisis--the most devastating energy market meltdown in our Nation's history--a number of agencies and officials have weighed in on the issue of market manipulation. In addition to simple common sense, their statements underscore the need for the ENRON Act. For example: FERC in March 2003 issued its Final Report on Price Manipulation in Western Markets. The voluminous FERC report found that: ``Enron's corporate culture fostered a disregard for the American energy customer; the success of the company's trading strategies, while temporary, demonstrates the need for explicit prohibitions on harmful and fraudulent market behavior and for aggressive market monitoring and enforcement.'' The General Accounting Office (GAO) in August 2003 issued a report entitled Additional Actions Would Help Ensure that FERC's Oversight and Enforcement Capability is Comprehensive and Systematic. Among GAO's observations: ``The heads of [FERC's] market monitoring units told us they recognize the difficulty of defining just and reasonable prices. They also said that they believe FERC has made some progress in doing so. However, they generally believed that FERC had not yet gone far enough.'' GAO further concluded that: ``we recommend that the Chairman of FERC more clearly define [the Commissions] role in overseeing the Nation's energy markets by . . . explicitly [describing FERC's] activities relative to carrying out the agency's statutory requirements to ensure just and reasonable prices and to preventing market manipulation.'' Republican FERC Commissioner Joe Kelliher wrote the following in a November 5 letter to me, just prior to his confirmation: ``Markets subject to manipulation cannot operate properly and there is an urgent need to proscribe manipulation of electricity markets. You have correctly noted there is no express prohibition of market manipulation in the Federal Power Act and have proposed legislation to establish an express prohibition. This is a critical point. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission only has the tools that Congress chooses to give it, and Congress has never given the Commission express authority to prohibit market manipulation. I believe the time has come for Congress to take that step.'' In the same letter, Kelliher goes on to note that, ``This is not to say that the Commission cannot take steps to prevent market manipulation under its existing legal authority . . . Since there would likely be legal challenges to any such effort to proscribe manipulative practices, it would be helpful for Congress to give the Commissioner clear

authority to prohibit market manipulation . . . I support the goals of your amendment'' [to the Agriculture Appropriations bill, which contains the same provisions as the ENRON Act] ``and believe it would go far towards effectively prohibiting manipulation of electricity markets.''

Recent events have clearly demonstrated the need for both the Electric Reliability Act of 2004, as well as the ENRON Act. On the other hand, the case is far less compelling for many of the provisions found in the H.R. 6 conference report. It's not just unpersuasive to argue that a 21st Century energy policy must include: liability protections for manufacturers of the groundwater pollutant MTBE; the weakening of landmark environmental laws such as the Clean Air, Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water Acts; and billions of dollars worth of subsidies, most infamously, taxpayer-backed bonds for construction of an energy efficient mall including a Hooters restaurant, it's absurd.

When the Senate last July agreed to send a comprehensive energy bill to conference with the House, few anticipated that we would get back a grab-bag of corporate give-aways so bloated that editorial pages from every corner of this Nation, from Yakima to Pensacola; Texarkana to Honolulu, would call on this body to put H.R. 6 out of its misery. Nor did many of us believe that common-sense legislation such as the ENRON Act--with broad, bipartisan support in the Senate--would be so quickly jettisoned by the conference report's authors.

Make no mistake: many of us in this chamber emphatically believe that we need an energy policy that will liberate this country from its dangerous dependence on foreign sources of oil and position our businesses to compete in the emerging global market for clean energy technologies. But to paraphrase my distinguished colleague from Vermont, Senator Jeffords, who has been a great leader on these issues, this Nation needs an energy bill, but certainly not this energy bill.

So today, we are introducing the Electric Reliability Act of 2004 and the ENRON Act, because it's time for this body to put the public interest ahead of the special interests poised to profit so handsomely from the passage of the energy bill conference report. We should take up and pass these individual pieces of legislation, which would mark a substantial achievement in the effort to upgrade the reliability of our Nation's grid and insulate our economy from the disastrous impacts of latter-day Enrons.

In last night's State of the Union speech, President Bush observed that ``consumers and businesses need reliable supplies of energy to make our economy run.'' I could not agree more. He also urged Congress to ``pass legislation to modernize our electricity system, promote conservation, and make America less dependent on foreign sources of energy.'' Nowhere in his address did President Bush mention tax breaks for Hooters; I did not hear him invoke rollback of environmental laws on behalf of polluters; nor did he cite the need to put in place protections for corporate looters such as Enron--all those provisions that have become the hallmark of the energy bill conference report.

So I ask my colleagues to recognize that we can make measurable progress this year on the objectives the President has outlined. But that will happen not by holding good energy policy hostage for bad energy policy, as the authors of H.R. 6 would have it. Rather, it will happen when we agree to set aside the H.R. 6 conference report and pass common-sense, consensus-based energy policy. And both the Electric Reliability and ENRON Acts fit this description.

I ask my colleagues to support these bills.

Mr. President, I am pleased to be joining the Senator from Washington, Ms. Cantwell, and the Senator from New York, Mrs. Clinton, as an original cosponsor of legislation to ensure the reliable delivery of electric power in the United States. This bill is similar to Title I of the S. 1754, the Electric Reliability Security Act of 2003, that I introduced last October in response to the Northeast blackout.

Last night, in his State of the Union, the President urged Congress to pass legislation to modernize our electricity system, promote conservation, and make America less dependent on foreign sources of energy. This bill, the Electric Reliability Act of 2004, addresses the President's request, and the Senate should pass it expeditiously. Our country needs the new, clear national rules of the road contained in this bill to ensure the reliable delivery of electric power.

As the people in the Northeast will not soon forget, in August 2003 nearly 50 million people were affected by a massive power outage. But this is not an isolated incident. On January 16, 2004, Gov. James Douglas urged Vermonters to save power to help avert rolling blackouts because of electricity problems in southern New England. Though there was likely enough power to meet my State's demand, but we are part of a regional grid system. This system, as we learned last year, needs to operate in a coordinated fashion or the region faces blackouts.

The Senator from New York, Mrs. Clinton, whose State was so significantly affected during the Northeast blackouts, knows well the hardship long electricity outages cause. I am pleased that she and the Senator from Washington, Ms. Cantwell, have joined in this effort. The Senator from Washington, Ms. Cantwell, has been alerted to the need for reliability legislation well before last year, as her State suffered during the massive multi-state Western blackout of 1996.

Be it 1996, 2003 or last week, these events emphasize the vulnerability of the U.S. electricity grid to human error, mechanical failure, and weather-related outages. Congress needs to do all that is necessary to protect the grid from devastating interruptions in the future. Those who know this issue well, say that reliability legislation is essential. On the first day of this year, Michehl Gent, President and Chief Executive of the North American Electric Reliability Council, said in the New York Times that all of the actions taken by industry and oversight organizations to respond to the Northeast blackout do ``not reduce the need for Federal legislation that would provide authority to impose and enforce mandatory reliability standards.'' He continues, ``whether legislation is adopted on a stand-alone basis or as part of a comprehensive energy bill, passage is essential. If reliability legislation had been enacted when first proposed, I believe that the blackout would not have occurred.''

Given that Congress has not passed grid reliability legislation, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission decided during its December 17, 2003 open

meeting to have its staff develop an order over the next few weeks requiring utilities and other jurisdictional entities to report violations of voluntary reliability standards set by the North American Electric Reliability Council. The Commission also asked for comment on its legal authority under existing statutes to mandate compliance with those standards.

Why is Congress making FERC waste time trying to determine whether they have the legal authority to act to protect consumers and ensure electric reliability? We should simply make that statutory authority clear. Reliability legislation has passed the Senate twice, and this bill asks the Senate to act on those same provisions again. Congress should establish mandatory reliability standards and close other regulatory gaps left by state deregulation of the electricity sector. We should pass this bill now, and I pledge my support to the Senators from Washington and New York, Senators Cantwell and Clinton in doing so. Given the high costs of power outages to our country, we cannot afford to do otherwise. I invite my colleagues to join us in our efforts to advance energy security and reliability in the United States.

Mr. President, I am pleased to be joining the Senator from Washington, Ms. Cantwell, and the Senator from New York, Mrs. Clinton, as an original cosponsor of legislation to ensure the reliable delivery of electric power in the United States. This bill is similar to Title I of the S. 1754, the Electric Reliability Security Act of 2003, that I introduced last October in response to the Northeast blackout.

Last night, in his State of the Union, the President urged Congress to pass legislation to modernize our electricity system, promote conservation, and make America less dependent on foreign sources of energy. This bill, the Electric Reliability Act of 2004, addresses the President's request, and the Senate should pass it expeditiously. Our country needs the new, clear national rules of the road contained in this bill to ensure the reliable delivery of electric power.

As the people in the Northeast will not soon forget, in August 2003 nearly 50 million people were affected by a massive power outage. But this is not an isolated incident. On January 16, 2004, Gov. James Douglas urged Vermonters to save power to help avert rolling blackouts because of electricity problems in southern New England. Though there was likely enough power to meet my State's demand, but we are part of a regional grid system. This system, as we learned last year, needs to operate in a coordinated fashion or the region faces blackouts.

The Senator from New York, Mrs. Clinton, whose State was so significantly affected during the Northeast blackouts, knows well the hardship long electricity outages cause. I am pleased that she and the Senator from Washington, Ms. Cantwell, have joined in this effort. The Senator from Washington, Ms. Cantwell, has been alerted to the need for reliability legislation well before last year, as her State suffered during the massive multi-state Western blackout of 1996.

Be it 1996, 2003 or last week, these events emphasize the vulnerability of the U.S. electricity grid to human error, mechanical failure, and weather-related outages. Congress needs to do all that is necessary to protect the grid from devastating interruptions in the future. Those who know this issue well, say that reliability legislation is essential. On the first day of this year, Michehl Gent, President and Chief Executive of the North American Electric Reliability Council, said in the New York Times that all of the actions taken by industry and oversight organizations to respond to the Northeast blackout do ``not reduce the need for Federal legislation that would provide authority to impose and enforce mandatory reliability standards.'' He continues, ``whether legislation is adopted on a stand-alone basis or as part of a comprehensive energy bill, passage is essential. If reliability legislation had been enacted when first proposed, I believe that the blackout would not have occurred.''

Given that Congress has not passed grid reliability legislation, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission decided during its December 17, 2003 open

meeting to have its staff develop an order over the next few weeks requiring utilities and other jurisdictional entities to report violations of voluntary reliability standards set by the North American Electric Reliability Council. The Commission also asked for comment on its legal authority under existing statutes to mandate compliance with those standards.

Why is Congress making FERC waste time trying to determine whether they have the legal authority to act to protect consumers and ensure electric reliability? We should simply make that statutory authority clear. Reliability legislation has passed the Senate twice, and this bill asks the Senate to act on those same provisions again. Congress should establish mandatory reliability standards and close other regulatory gaps left by state deregulation of the electricity sector. We should pass this bill now, and I pledge my support to the Senators from Washington and New York, Senators Cantwell and Clinton in doing so. Given the high costs of power outages to our country, we cannot afford to do otherwise. I invite my colleagues to join us in our efforts to advance energy security and reliability in the United States.

Mr. President, today I am pleased to join Senator Hatch, as well as Senators Kohl and DeWine, in sponsoring the Satellite Home Viewer Extension Act. The Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act, which we passed in 1999, established a statutory license for satellite carriers to make secondary transmission of ``distant'' network and superstation television programs. That license will expire this year, however, so today's bill will extend that license, found in section 119 of the Copyright Act, for 5 years in order to ensure that the laudable goals of the initial bill are fully realized.

The Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act was the result of much work in the Senate Judiciary Committee, and it enjoyed strong bipartisan support in both Houses of Congress. The license created in section 119 serves a very worthwhile purpose: it permits households that cannot receive local network programming over-the-air to receive those shows by satellite. For the many viewers who are not served by local networks or cable companies--which is the case for a great many people in the rural areas of my home State of Vermont--this is absolutely critical. Of special importance is the fact that the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act permits the satellite transmission of ``local-into- local'' programming, so that satellite companies can retransmit local broadcast signals to subscribers who actually live in the local market, but cannot receive the broadcast signal. Providing the news and local interest programming that is so vital to the creation and maintenance of a healthy and involved community has been the most gratifying result of the passage of that act. Furthermore, this license enhances competition by placing providers of satellite television programming on an equal footing with cable operators, which enjoy the benefits of their own statutory licenses.

Such important progress does take time, however, and the satellite carriers have not yet made these local signals available to all their subscribers. Although the provision of ``local-into-local'' programming is proceeding well, and although competition between cable and satellite companies has been strengthened, there is still more to be done before the goal of the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act is fully realized. If we fail to reauthorize the section 119 license, satellite programming may be unavailable as a real choice for many households, and many rural viewers will have little or no programming at all.

I look forward to working again with my colleagues on this important issue and to a speedy reauthorization of this important license.