Senate sustains energy grants

WASHINGTON – The Senate broke with Barack Obama on Monday as it voted to keep alive a grant program to help people in rural areas receive reasonably priced electricity despite the president’s demand to kill it.

The 55-41 vote represented another win for the old-school Appropriations Committee over Obama and presidential election opponent Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who backed Obama’s effort to eliminate the Agriculture Department’s High Energy Cost Grant Program.

The program provides money for electricity generation projects in places such as Indian reservations, rural cooperatives and, especially, Alaska.

But the $18 million program made it onto Obama’s roster of 75 recommended cuts or eliminations of so-called discretionary programs funded by Congress each year, totaling $11.5 billion. He announced the cuts in May to great fanfare, but Congress has mostly ignored them.

The White House budget office said the program duplicates a loan guarantee program that achieves the same kind of results at no cost to taxpayers.

Obama’s budget mentions Alaska and Hawaii as the chief beneficiaries of the program, but Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski reminded her colleagues that a dozen other states have benefited and that eight others have pending applications. And she said the grants can only go to areas where electricity costs are almost three times higher than the national average.