BPA raid predictable.

Byline: The Register-Guard

"In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes," Benjamin Franklin once observed. Add another item to that list: presidential efforts to force the Bonneville Power Administration to charge market rates and, ultimately, to privatize the federal power marketing agency.

There's just something about the idea of monkeying with the BPA and the low-cost energy it produces that's irresistible to occupants of the Oval Office. Its five most recent occupants, including the current president, have all pursued plans to turn a federal agency that was created to provide low-cost energy to the Northwest into an oversized ATM for the federal government.

There's also something about the idea that has a way of forging fierce - and effective - bipartisan opposition by the senators and representatives who make up the Northwest delegation in Congress.

Two decades ago, Republicans such as Oregon Sens. Mark Hatfield and Bob Packwood joined with Democrats such as Sen. Henry M. Jackson and House Majority Leader Tom Foley to beat back federal raids on the BPA. Now, the names have changed, and Republicans such as Oregon Sen. Gordon Smith and Idaho Sen. Larry Craig link arms with Democrats such as Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Peter DeFazio to defend the BPA and the vital role it plays in the region's economy.

Last Wednesday, Northwest lawmakers announced they had enough votes to block a Bush administration plan to force the BPA to charge market rates for its electricity. The region's residents should hope the head count is accurate: Studies project that the administration's scheme could zap the Northwest's economy by jacking up wholesale power prices by as much as 60 percent over the next three years, costing ratepayers $1.3 billion annually and resulting in the loss of up to 60,000 jobs.

The Bush White House is selling its plan with the same wobbly rationales employed by its predecessors. The argument goes like this: Federal power agencies such as the BPA supply cheap power at artificially low rates made possible by unfair federal subsidies. Forcing them to pay market rates levels the playing field with nonfederal power providers and provides new revenue for the federal government.

That logic has some short circuits, starting with an astonishing indifference to the devastating impacts of steep power price increases on the Northwest, a region still struggling to recover from the recession and the West Coast energy crisis that helped fuel it.

In its frantic quest to find money to help backfill the federal deficit, the administration also is misrepresenting the federal government's financial relationship with the BPA. The agency was created nearly seven decades ago for the express purpose of providing cheap energy to the Northwest and promoting development in the region.

The relationship has hardly been a losing proposition for the federal government. Northwest ratepayers have repaid, with interest, the federal taxpayers' investment in the construction of the Columbia River dams that supply most of BPA's power. The BPA also covers all its own operating costs and, in fact, is legally barred from receiving federal funding for its operations.

The Bush plan would affect not only the BPA, but also three other regional agencies that supply power to dozens of states in the South and West. The breadth of the proposal hopefully will help ensure its doom by creating a bipartisan critical mass in Congress determined to defeat the administration plan.

However, the Bush administration shows no signs of backing off. Just one day after Northwest lawmakers announced they had enough votes to block the plan, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman told a Senate committee that the administration intends to move forward.

Wyden's response echoed that of his congressional predecessors: "We're going to block you, Mr. Secretary, I'll just give you that up front."