This is the message lobbying groups and lawmakers were delivering ahead of Bodman's confirmation hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Wednesday.
Groups have extended an invitation to Bodman, who is expected to face a swift confirmation, to take up the reigns of the administration's energy policy agenda and engage rather than avoid Congress, a criticism that was leveled against outgoing Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. There is some optimism that Bodman could play a key role in moving stalled energy legislation by providing leadership on regional and partisan energy disputes that have wearied even the most ardent supporters of an energy bill.
The day President Bush announced his nomination, Bodman said he planned to try to jumpstart consideration of comprehensive energy legislation by Congress.
In 2001, Vice President Richard Cheney and a White House team drafted the administration's energy policy and over the next three years it was the vice president who worked with Congress to broker deals on legislation not Abraham.
Opening in the debate The White House energy working group that crafted the administration's initial proposal, however, has dispersed and Vice President Cheney has moved onto other pressing domestic and international issues, leaving a potential opening for Bodman.
Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., and a member of the Energy Committee, contacted Bodman shortly after his nomination was announced in December, a spokesman for the senator said.
Bodman, now the No. 2 official in the Treasury Department, would take over a department with an annual budget of $23 billion and oversight of a wide array of issues including nuclear nonproliferation efforts, energy research and development, and security issues.
But the management responsibilities of running the Energy Department are not expected to prove daunting for Bodman, who entered the Bush administration in 2001 as a deputy secretary at the Commerce Department. He served in that agency about two years before jumping to Treasury for a year.
In addition to his tenure in government, Bodman has served as president and chief operating officer of Fidelity Investments and worked as a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
