Hi,
Various pieces of info about Grassley & energy bill. Especially see last
few paragraphs.
I like to see Rs wanting to "pound sense" into other Rs!
Phyllis Mains
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ENVIRONMENT & ENERGY DAILY
Update for Wednesday a.m. Nov. 12, 2003
1 ENERGY POLICY
Daschle raises energy bill stakes with filibuster threat
Mary O'Driscoll, Environment & Energy Daily senior reporter
Suggesting Congress may have to stay in session through December, Senate
Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) raised the energy bill stakes
yesterday when he declared Senate Democrats are prepared to filibuster
the energy bill to at least give caucus members enough time to review it
before they vote.
His remarks, which included calling the energy conference "bizarre" and
setting the odds of passing an energy bill this year at "far less than
50-50," set off a round of tit-for-tat with Republicans over an energy
conference whose final vote has been canceled six times in six weeks
because Republicans have not been able to agree on tax and ethanol policy
issues.
For their part, Senate Republican leaders insist they can complete all
their work -- appropriations, Medicare prescription drug reform and
energy legislation -- by the Nov. 21 adjournment deadline.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said he is confident the
energy conference report will be ready next week and noted this is the
first energy bill that will actually create jobs, though he did not
elaborate. Daschle's comments, he said, reflect that the Democratic
leader does not want an energy bill.
Daschle said final action on the energy bill is unlikely this year
because there is no conference report at this late date, the exclusion of
Democrats from conference negotiations will likely prolong the debate,
and the House took this week off because there was no work for it to do.
He predicted Congress will remain in session through part of December and
finish "closer to Christmas than to Thanksgiving."
Daschle also called the energy and Medicare conferences "the two most
bizarre conferences" in memory. On the energy side, observers can expect
further delays because once the Republicans finish their work the
Democrats "will have to hash it out all over," Daschle said.
Daschle said he appreciates the promise by Senate Energy and Natural
Resources Committee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) to give the Democrats
48 hours to review the legislation. But "it may take longer," he said.
"After debating it privately and secretly for months, they will then give
us 48 hours to do what they've been doing for months," Daschle said. "I
think the unfairness is just so apparent and blatant that it's deeply
troubling to many of us."
Democrats, he said, "will do all we can to protect our members so they
have time to prepare for the bill."
Whether they will work to kill the bill on substance is unclear, Daschle
added, as no one has yet seen the final product. Republicans insist
Daschle has talked with conference leaders and is aware of what is in the
energy bill, while Democrats say Daschle only has been told what the
ethanol provisions are and has not been able to see actual language
beyond that subject.
Senate GOP dares Democrats to vote 'no'
On their side of the aisle, Senate Republicans maintain they will
complete the energy bill next week. And they appear to be daring the
Democrats to vote against it.
"They're not going to vote against a bill with all the ethanol stuff in
it," said Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), an energy conferee. Including strong
ethanol support language that requires U.S. energy markets to use 5
billion gallons of ethanol a year over the next decade is intended to get
the support of Midwestern Democrats such as Daschle.
But last week, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), another ethanol-state
Democrat, said Republicans counting on his and other Democrats' votes
just because the energy bill includes ethanol language "have been sadly
misinformed."
Lott said he does not believe Daschle's threat. "That huffing and puffing
wouldn't scare me," he said. Forty-eight hours to read anything, he
added, "is long enough."
Sen. Craig Thomas (R-Wyo.), also an energy conferee, took issue with
Daschle calling the conference "bizarre," saying it is no more bizarre
than how the Democrats handled the energy bill and appropriations bills
when they controlled the Senate last year, when Daschle took control of
the energy bill drafting process and Congress rolled over the
appropriations bills until the spring.
Another GOP conferee, Sen. Larry Craig (Idaho), said he doubts the
Democrats will stop the bill.
"Do they want to stop a national energy policy?" Craig asked,
particularly as it contains at least 50 percent of what was in the
Democrats' bill from last year. Such obstructionism, Craig said, cost
them politically last year and will cost them politically again.
Domenici, meanwhile, insists that ethanol supporters such as Daschle "are
going to be very, very happy" with the bill. "They've gotten a very good
deal," Domenici said.
And though he has been pressured to cut back on his 48-hour promise to
the Democrats, Domenici said he intends to stick with it.
Yet signs are that Domenici may have some trouble on the energy bill from
within his own ranks. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), for instance, said he
could not support the bill in its current form, deriding it as nothing
more than "an Iranian bazaar" of corporate giveaways, particularly to the
large ethanol producers.
And this week, the Portland, Maine, Press-Herald reported that Maine
Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, both Republicans, are opposed to
granting liability protection to producers of methyl tertiary butyl ether
(MTBE), a provision that many Republicans have been trying to keep in the
bill. Maine has been at the forefront of the MTBE contamination debate.
Conference report remains unfinished
The conference report remains unfinished because of internal Republican
differences over issues that were thought to have been completed. Among
them, Domenici said, are what kind of tax structure -- a production tax
credit or tax incentive -- should be put in place for nuclear power, and
how to structure the Section 45 clean coal tax credit. The coal issue is
particularly sticky, he said, because it involves several states.
Another sticking point remains on the nontax policy side of the debate,
and that is on the allocation of offshore oil and gas revenues.
Also on the nontax policy side, a relatively recent addition to the
energy bill debate appears to be changes to the board of the Tennessee
Valley Authority (TVA). Frist is reported to be planning to add to the
energy bill a provision to increase the size of the TVA board from three
full-time directors to a nine-member, part-time board, which then would
hire a chief executive to run the agency's day-to-day operations.
Former TVA Chairman Craven Crowell told the Associated Press such an
expansion would be a "bad idea," and the first step toward privatization
of the public power utility.
Both Domenici and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley
(R-Iowa) appeared frustrated yesterday at the unfinished status of the
energy bill. They blamed the situation on the House Ways and Means
Committee, which by yesterday afternoon had not responded to the Finance
Committee's latest offer made on Sunday night.
Grassley often criticizes the House for its focus on the oil and gas
industries when the energy bill -- according to Grassley -- should offer
a better balance between those fuel sources and nuclear power, renewable
energy, conservation and coal. Yesterday he characterized the
negotiations as trying "to pound some sense into [House members'] heads
that we want some balance in the program."
The Democrats, Grassley said, are "legitimately within the Senate rules"
if they want to filibuster the bill. However, an energy bill that is
well-balanced and bipartisan "will avoid a filibuster,"
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