McLeod Lecture Series: Louisiana’s Influence in Washington

McLeod Lecture Series: Louisiana’s Influence in Washington »»»Published: May 05, 2007

McLeod Lecture 4: Louisiana’s Influence in Washington: Senators John Breaux & J. Bennett Johnston Share Their Perspectives: 2007

Louisiana Public Broadcasting and McNeese State University present the fourtrh annual McLeod Lecture Series.

From Huey Long and his son Russell to Allen Ellender, Louisiana has had a tradition of powerful United States Senators. Former Senators John Breaux and J. Bennett Johnston discuss their time in Washington and how the system works in this discussion taped at the Central School in Lake Charles. Former Blanco Communications Director Bob Mann is the moderator. The annual lecture series honors the late Bill McLeod.

The Senators
The Moderator
Resources
Credits

McLeod Lecture Series is honored to have former senators John Breaux and J. Bennett Johnston share stories about representing Louisiana in the U.S. Senate. Topics relating to oil and gas, health care, wetlands and more are sure to make for a lively discussion. Louisiana’s U.S. Senators have had a unique place on Capitol Hill, especially as it relatesto the oil and gas industry.

Louisiana’s Influence in Washington: Senators John Breaux & J. Bennett Johnston Share Their Perspectives is part of the McLeod Lecture Series at McNeese State University.

Senator John Breaux

Breaux led a long and distinguished career in Congress. He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1972 at the age of 28—at the time of his election he was the youngest member of the U.S. Congress. He represented the 7th District of Louisiana for 14 years before being elected to fill Sen. Russell Long’s seat in 1986.Breaux was a widely recognized bipartisan leader in the Senate, and in 1993, he was elected by his Democratic colleagues to the post of Deputy Minority Whip, a position he held until his retirement. He also held a number of key Senate committee positions. A senior member of the Finance Committee, Breaux served as the chairman of the Subcommittee on Social Security and Family Policy. He also held positions on two other Finance Subcommittees--the Subcommittee on Health Care and the Subcommittee on Taxation and IRS Oversight.From his position on the Finance Committee, he played instrumental roles in forging the compromises that led to passage of the welfare reform and health insurance reform bills in 1996. He was also a leader in the efforts to reduce the capital gains tax and to provide tax relief for college education expenses.As chairman of the Special Committee on Aging, Breaux highlighted the importance of protecting and strengthening Social Security, Medicare and other programs. In 1998 he was selected by the White House and House and Senate leaders to chair the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare. Also in 1998, he co-chaired the National Commission on Retirement Policy, which produced legislation to help reform Social Security.While in the Senate, Breaux was a recognized leader on energy issues. He served as co-chair of the Oil and Gas Caucus and was a conferee on the energy legislation that eventually was written into the 2005 Energy Bill. Breaux was active in advancing legislation to promote domestic oil and gas production and was a co-sponsor of the Marginal Well Preservation Act, a tax-incentive program to encourage oil production from marginal oil wells. He was also a principal author of the Outer Continental Shelf Land Act.Breaux was also a founder of the Centrist Coalition of Senate Democrats and Republicans and served as chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council. In 2005 President George W. Bush appointed Breaux as the co-chair of the President’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform.Upon his retirement from the U.S. Senate in 2005, Breaux joined Patton Boggs, LLP, as senior counsel, where he provides strategic advice to the firm’s attorneys and clients on a wide range of public policy matters, with special concentration in the areas of health care and energy law.

Senator J. Bennett Johnston

Johnston’s public political career spanned 32 years, including eight years in the Louisiana Legislature and 24 years in the U.S. Senate. As a member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources from its creation and as its chairman and ranking member for much of that time, he was either directly or indirectly responsible for all energy legislation considered by the Congress between 1973 and 1996. He proposed and passed the first electricity restructuring legislation as part of the Energy Policy Act of 1992; that Act also contained extensive provisions regarding natural gas and re-wrote the nuclear licensing provisions of federal law. Johnston was the principal sponsor of natural gas deregulation as well as the Royalty Relief Act. He was the floor manager of literally hundreds of bills including California Central Valley water reform and the Tongass timber reform bills. In addition to energy policy, his position on this committee provided Johnston with an oversight role on the operations of federal lands and the territories of the United States. In a front-page article in the National Journal entitled “Power Broker,” Johnston was described as the man to see on all matters involving energy policy. The secret of his success according to Physics Today was “by doing what he does best: mastering the technical details of arcane topics, forging a bipartisan coalition to back his approach and in negotiating trade-offs and compromises with his opponents.”Johnston was considered a “legislator’s legislator” and as such he acted as the chairman of the full Appropriations Committee as well as the Defense Subcommittee when chairman John Stennis was indisposed and acted as chairman of the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee for Sen. Robert Byrd when he was the Majority Leader. He also served on the Senate Budget Committee since its inception, was a senior member of the Appropriations Committee and chairman and ranking member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development. He served for many years on the Appropriations Subcommittees of HUD and Independent Agencies, Interior, Agriculture and Defense. His career produced a formidable list of legislative triumphs including measures to provide navigation, flood control, hurricane protection and other infrastructure projects critical to Louisiana’s future and played a significant role in the federal recognition of several Louisiana Indian Tribes. He successfully concluded a five-year battle to pass the Deep Water Royalty Relief Act, a measure which has spurred a dramatic increase in deep water oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, just before his retirement from the U.S. Senate in 1997.Since 1997, Johnston has served as chairman of Johnston & Associates, LLC, a government relations firm, and has provided strategic public and legislative affairs consultation and representation to a broad range of some of the world’s largest and most progressive private and public entities. His special concentration is in the area of energy.

McLeod Lecture Series: Louisiana’s Influence in Washington »»»Published: May 05, 2007

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