For most of us, Halloween trick-or-treating only comes once a year.  On Capitol Hill, however, lobbyists and lawmakers can knock on doors all year round and expect handouts.  That is, of course, until people stop answering the door and your favorite treats get the axe.  So it is with former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and his hometown, Sugar Land, Texas, a story that paints a classic portrait of members of Congress and their corporate backers bobbing for public dollars, while the public remains at the mercy of congressional popularity contests.

Sugar Land received a huge bag of treats after Rep. DeLay ascended to his leadership position three years ago.  A $1.5 billion research and development program for deepwater and nonconventional oil and gas drilling - to be housed in Sugar Land - was snuck into the 2005 energy bill conference report after the conference was gaveled closed.  Now that Mr. DeLay has fallen from grace, however, this project is getting special scrutiny, and Sugar Land may have to turn elsewhere to cure its sweet tooth for candy-coated congressional pork.   

In his recently released fiscal year 2007 budget request, the president proposes zeroing out the deepwater program.  Following the president's lead, Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) introduced the appropriately titled S. 2251, the "Withdraw Energy Addicting New Subsidies Act of 2006," or WEANS Act, with the explicit purpose of repealing Rep. DeLay's nefarious amendment. 

Naturally, beneficiaries of the program are opposing efforts of the White House and Senator Wyden, including the Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America (RPSEA), a non-profit corporation conveniently located in Rep. DeLay's home district of Sugar Land, Texas.  Housed at the Texas Energy Center (TEC), RPSEA is comprised of various universities, non-profits, and energy and technology companies, including Halliburton and Marathon Oil.  There are 24 board members, including a Marathon executive.

Sensing a shift in the tides, Melanie Kenderdine, a board member of RPSEA and vice president of the Gas Technology Institute, showing optimism that the program will survive, argued that  "the president's budget request is, as always, just one step in a lengthy process," she said. "Furthermore, this program is outside the appropriations process, and in order to defund it, you would have to repeal a law - the energy bill."        

Of all people, however, Ms. Kenderdine should know better.  After all, procedural questions didn't keep the Sugar Land earmark from sneaking into the bill in the first place, so it seems likely that such details won't stop it from getting cut if congressional whim allows - which for the sake of taxpayers and our offshore environment is exactly what should happen.

The moral of this story is that Congress needs to start making decisions based on the public's best interest.  The Sugar Land story never should have happened in the first place, though the fact that Congress is willing to correct its original mistake is laudable.  In the future, however, we can only hope that such projects won't be allowed at all, no matter how powerful the congressman that champions the idea.