Spencer Abraham Energy Department Established: 1977 2003 Budget: $22.1 billion Full-time Employees: 16,300 Rumsfeld's Salary: $171,900 Web Site: www.doe.gov Overall Grade: B Back To Overview And Other Cabinet Grades

National Journal
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Friday, Jan. 24, 2003

Even though he once advocated the Energy Department's abolition, Spencer Abraham was one of its staunchest supporters during his first two years as President Bush's Energy secretary. Abraham didn't think much of the department in 1994, when he was elected to the Senate from Michigan during the Gingrich revolution. Abraham and a small group of fellow conservative Republicans advocated shrinking the federal bureaucracy by eliminating the Energy Department. Today, though, he argues that his department has a clear and essential mission: national security.

Marching with that banner, Abraham has led administration efforts to encourage Russia and other former Soviet-bloc countries to move more aggressively to promote nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, although his critics contend that Abraham's advocacy of nuclear power complicates that message. Abraham has pushed for greater development of domestic energy sources and supported high-tech advances in the nation's energy industries. His most impressive achievement was winning Senate approval of the Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste depository in Nevada over the objections of the state's officials, many of them Republicans. He successfully argued that establishing a safe, permanent storage site for such waste is essential to national security.

Abraham, who has a disarmingly self-deprecating sense of humor, was appointed in part because he was a dedicated party workhorse who had lost his 2000 bid for a second term in the Senate. It helped, too, that Abraham had earned respect in the Senate from colleagues on both sides of the aisle. But critics such as Charles Curtis, deputy Energy secretary under President Clinton, still see considerable room for improvement. As Curtis puts it, "I don't think he has succeeded yet in acquiring for himself or the department the stature within the executive (branch) that is required for him to carry out that job to optimal effect."

Before becoming Energy secretary, Abraham, now 50, had no specific expertise in energy issues, although as a senator he had shown an interest in high tech and other scientific topics. According to associates, he would have preferred to head the Transportation Department because of the auto industry's importance to his home state. But Abraham has been an eager salesman for the White House's national energy strategy plan, which was orchestrated by Vice President Cheney, not Abraham. The Energy secretary has not made any big splashes by proposing initiatives of his own. Indeed, some reporters refer to him as the "invisible secretary."

Through luck and some skill, Abraham has avoided the scandals and public-relations debacles that plagued his predecessors. In the process, he's become the quintessential Bush Cabinet secretary: a low-key team player.

Inside Influence Grade: B
Abraham took over the Energy Department in the middle of the California energy crisis and promptly became the administration's spokesman on the issue. He backed Bush's hard-line opposition to imposing price caps or taking other federal action to stabilize California's soaring electricity prices. And he was critical of Democratic Gov. Gray Davis's handling of the emergency. As California's crisis worsened, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which is independent of the Energy Department, eventually adopted a form of price limits.

In May 2001, Cheney unveiled the White House's energy strategy. Abraham turned his attention to selling and implementing that initiative, which lays out the administration's priorities for the Energy Department and several other agencies.

Because the Bush White House is so oriented toward energy production, Abraham has had no difficulty ensuring that the energy industry's views are heard loud and clear in administration debates on environmental policy. He has won more interagency battles than previous Energy secretaries. Insiders credit him, for example, with tempering some air-pollution controls contemplated by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The White House handed off administration policy on global warming to Abraham and Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans -- a notable shift from previous administrations, which had allowed the EPA and the State Department to take the lead on the issue. Yet Abraham was not among the top Bush aides asked to pull together the Department of Homeland Security -- despite the potentially catastrophic security problems facing the nation's energy infrastructure and despite the importance of his department's research labs to national security.

A skilled politician and a former aide to then-Vice President Dan Quayle, Abraham knows how to maneuver within the White House. He worked closely with Bush to gain Senate approval of the Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste storage facility. But although he has visited Camp David with his family, Abraham doesn't have a close personal relationship with the president.

Hill Clout Grade: A
The most striking accomplishment of Abraham's first two years at Energy was gaining Senate approval of the Yucca Mountain underground nuclear-waste depository, which is designed to permanently house much of the waste from the nation's commercial nuclear reactors, as well as some of the military's nuclear waste. Although he began as a relative neophyte on the long-running Yucca Mountain controversy, Abraham brought in experts to school him on the arcane scientific and political factors shaping that debate.

Republicans and Democrats in Congress say that Abraham put his personal stamp on the nuclear-waste issue, going to the Hill to testify and intensely lobby lawmakers. Abraham says that his six years in the Senate help make him an effective advocate when he returns to Capitol Hill. "There is perhaps a greater credibility when a former member is making the case," he explained. "They could trust me if I said, `These are the facts.'"

Abraham also played an important role in lobbying Congress on the omnibus energy legislation package, which failed to pass in the last Congress. Although on the sidelines during House consideration of the bill, Abraham and his staff actively worked with the Senate and with the House-Senate conference committee to negotiate provisions to change the way the electricity industry is regulated. However, once it became clear that the Democrats would have to hand control of the Senate over to the Republicans early in the new Congress, Republicans stopped pushing for final passage of last year's bill. This year, Abraham said, the Republicans plan to craft a new energy package-minus liberal Democratic proposals that the White House opposed, such as a provision to require electricity companies to generate part of their power from alternative energy sources.

Political Imperatives Grade: B
Under Abraham, the Energy Department has strengthened its relationship with energy-related industries. Abraham wins strong praise from the nuclear power industry, which applauds his continuing efforts to pave the way for construction of a new generation of nuclear power plants. By contrast, Abraham has not been nearly as receptive to critics of the administration, particularly environmental groups.

Abraham has deftly defused the political and public-relations problems that have arisen on his watch. Last summer, he helped minimize the controversy surrounding his department's plans to transfer six tons of weapons-grade plutonium from Colorado's shuttered Rocky Flats nuclear arms facility to a federal site in South Carolina. Jim Hodges, then the Democratic governor of South Carolina, wanted Energy to hold off the shipments until the federal government built a promised plutonium-reprocessing plant. Hodges accused the White House of speeding up the move so as to help the re-election prospects of Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo. Abraham won a court order allowing the shipments, thus neutralizing the opposition. He's also won kudos for accelerating the Clinton administration's initiative to clean up former weapons-building sites and for securing extra funds for that endeavor from White House budget officials.

Abraham has not been a regular on the Sunday talk shows since the California energy crisis, even though political unrest in Venezuela and the Middle East have sparked worries about world oil prices. Instead, he's doing what the White House wants him to do: cheerlead for its energy strategy.

Running The Department Grade: C
A Harvard Law School graduate who is described as a quick study, Abraham took on a colossal task when he walked through the doors at the Energy Department. "The department's far-flung mission is daunting, to say the least," noted former Deputy Energy Secretary Elizabeth Moler, now a lobbyist for a Chicago-based electricity firm. The Energy secretary is responsible not only for domestic energy programs but also for nuclear weapons development facilities and for expensive hazardous-waste cleanup programs at current and former nuclear arms plants.

Abraham's lack of experience in energy issues initially made it difficult for him to get his arms around the department's problems. Career staffers throughout the agency say that Abraham has tended to isolate himself with a core group of political appointees, who have been slower than the higher-ups in past administrations to reach out to the rest of the staff for help and advice.

Management woes have continued to beset the national research laboratories, and critics say Abraham has been slow to tackle the problem. During the Clinton administration, the labs were rife with scandal over mismanagement and spying allegations. During Abraham's tenure, whistle-blowers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory disclosed evidence of fraud and national security breaches. In early January, under pressure from Abraham, the University of California, which runs the lab, fired two top Los Alamos officials. Abraham says he plans to make the labs a priority in the coming year.

Abraham has also had his hands full in dealing with the National Nuclear Security Administration, the semi-autonomous Energy Department agency that Congress created in 1999 to run the nuclear weapons complex. Accused of being overly bureaucratic, that agency is undergoing a long-awaited reorganization. Insiders say Energy officials are still struggling to establish a working relationship with the agency.

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