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,"