|
Congress puts off energy bill to final week before adjournment
Larry Persily Petroleum News Juneau correspondent
It wasn’t supposed to happen this way, but the long-awaited national energy policy bill will not be released to the public and set for a vote in the House and Senate until the final days of the congressional session — and even that is iffy.
Adjournment is scheduled for Nov. 21.
The energy bill is on lawmakers’ last-minute work list, along with several appropriation measures and always contentious Medicare legislation.
If lawmakers fail to finish their chores on time, the option is to take a week off for Thanksgiving and then return to the Capitol for more work before Christmas, said John Katz, director of the state of Alaska’s Washington, D.C., office. The energy bill could be among those measures delayed until December, he said.
Congressional negotiators had expected to unveil the energy bill Monday, Nov. 10, with conference committee action by the middle of the week and then votes in the full House and Senate in plenty of time before Thanksgiving adjournment. But the failure of negotiators and congressional leaders to reach agreement on many of the usual suspects — plus some new ones — pushed the bill off the schedule for yet another week.
Without the energy bill to consider, the Senate moved along on its agenda and debated the backlog of the president’s federal judicial appointments awaiting confirmation, said Justin Stiefel, chief of staff to Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska. The House canceled its votes and shut down for the week, Katz said. Fast track slowed down Conference committee work on the energy bill started in early September, with several House and Senate conferees eager to proclaim the bill was on a fast track to adoption to show the public that Congress could respond quickly to the August electrical blackout that hit East Coast and Midwest states. The committee was set up to settle differences between separate energy bills adopted by each chamber earlier in the year.
The bill is a top priority for President Bush, who wants to boost domestic energy production.
Negotiators reportedly had reached agreement earlier this month on one of the largest problem provisions — federal tax credits to double the use of corn-based ethanol in motor fuels, to the pleasure of farm-state lawmakers — with the more recent unresolved provisions including tax incentives for nuclear power and coal-burning power plants and other tax issues.
The measure includes an estimated $16 billion in tax incentives for all sorts of energy production, including oil and gas, coal, nuclear and ethanol. Small projects a problem, too Local projects also were reported on the list of last-minute delays in bringing a final bill to the committee, including a tourism and education center in Iowa backed by Senate Finance Chair Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.
Perhaps not wanting to be singled out, Grassley said the Iowa center was one of five such projects in the bill and he would favor dropping all of the projects if needed to reach a compromise — but not just his home-state project.
Squeezing the bill into the final week before adjournment will exacerbate already angry Democrats, who complain of being shut out of the closed-door Republican negotiations over the measure and protest they will not have adequate time to review the legislation. Senate GOP leaders said they intend to stick with their promise that the Democrats — and the public — will have the draft bill 48 hours in advance of the conference committee meeting, where Republicans will push to adopt the measure without amendments.
Congressional rules prohibit amending the bill on the floor of either chamber. If the Democrats are going to try changing any provisions, they need to take their shot in the conference committee.
It’s been a high-profile political struggle throughout the negotiations. Leaders compromised on the ethanol-fuel tax credits only after Vice President Dick Cheney stepped in to push for a settlement. No veto if bill does not include ANWR The White House got involved again this past week when Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham told reporters the president would sign the bill even if it does not include opening Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling. It was the first time the administration had said it would support the bill without one of the president’s favored provisions.
“I don’t think we’ve ever issued anything that we would veto legislation if it didn’t have (ANWR drilling),” Abraham told reporters. “We need to have a bill, and getting that bill, even if it’s not perfect, through the finish line is our priority.”
Democratic and environmentally supportive Republican opposition is expected to keep ANWR out of the bill, with the state of Alaska still waiting for negotiators to decide on another of its key requests for the legislation — an expansion of the $3-per-barrel federal tax credit to cover North Slope heavy oil production. Critics attack tax breaks Meanwhile, environmental and taxpayer-watchdog groups do not share the energy secretary’s enthusiasm for passing the energy bill. They have criticized the measure as too expensive, with too many tax credits for industry. And they say it falls far short of taking meaningful steps to conserve traditional energy sources or expand the use of alternative energy.
Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., said the bill is far too favorable and profitable for energy companies, without enough to benefit consumers in the long run.
“The administration’s energy policy plan will do about as much to improve the nation’s energy security as the administration’s invasion of Iraq has done to stem the tide of global terrorism,” Byrd said in a Senate speech, according to Reuters news service.
| 