Cheney optimistic Bush energy plan can clear Congress

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Conceding that the impending switch in control of the Senate could make it more difficult to push ahead with the Bush administration's energy program, Vice President Dick Cheney said Friday he still thinks the plan can find enough bipartisan support to succeed.

"The basic makeup of the Senate doesn't change. The votes are the same," Cheney said during an appearance before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "If there was justification for a Republican Senate addressing these issues last week, there's justification for a Democratically controlled Senate addressing them going forward."

"I've got a lot of friends on the Democratic side who I think are interested in solving some of these problems," said Cheney, who was in charge of drafting the administration's energy blueprint, unveiled last week. It lists 105 recommendations.

But the vice president admitted that getting the energy plan through the Senate "would be easier if my friend Trent Lott were the majority leader." And when a questioner referred to how Vermont Sen. James Jeffords' decision to leave the GOP had "shuffled the deck" by tipping control to the Democrats, Cheney quipped, "Shuffled the deck or stacked it?"

In his remarks to business leaders from across the country, Cheney also said the administration is interested in finding common ground with environmental groups and others who have sharply criticized the energy plan as too light on conservation and too heavy on generating new energy supplies at the expense of the environment

Cheney said said thinks critics offered "a quick reaction without really sitting down to look at the report and see what we're proposing."

"We ought to respect one another enough to listen to what the other person is saying, to hear the arguments and the debate and join in a good, solid substantive debate about these proposals and about this problem and about how we can make progress against it," he said. "Even if we can only agree part of the time, that would be progress. I think the nation deserves no less."

Cheney that the view that conservation is not part of the administration's plan is wrong, and he said that 11 of 12 items in the Sierra Club's own energy plan are addressed in the White House plan.

But the vice president reiterated his view that conservation and increased use of alternative energy sources will not be enough to address the country's energy needs over the next 20 years. He said that even if the amount of electricity generated from alternative energy sources tripled, it would still meet only 6 percent of the nation's power needs.

"If you are going to generate more electric power in this country over the next 20 years, you're going to do it with coal, or you're going to do it with nuclear, or you're going to do it with (natural) gas," he said. "Those are really the viable options for the foreseeable future."