Right up until today, it looked like things had settled down a little in the energy debate on the Senate side.  EPW was holding their hearings, a partisan bill would be reported out in order to have something to take to Copenhagen, and then some combination of the various bills would eventually come to the floor.  Just like we predicted last week.  But this morning, it looks like EPW Republicans might be throwing a wrench into the process.  According to E&E, “Boxer cannot hold the markup unless at least two Republicans show up, and EPW ranking member James Inhofe (R-Okla.) signaled that he has unanimous support among the panel’s minority members to boycott the session until they get more data on the legislation from U.S. EPA and the Congressional Budget Office.”

The long-term implications of this move probably aren’t great.  As we said, the Kerry-Boxer bill was only going to be one part of a leadership bill anyway.  But for the short-term, this creates problems.  Presumably, the U.S. delegation would like to have something to show progress on climate change when they arrive at Copenhagen.  There is always the House bill, but considering how little traction it has received since passage, that would not be the preferred option.

One interesting thing to watch is whether this gives even more momentum to the Kerry-Graham approach.  Already, behind the scenes, some Republicans have been saying this week that a potential Kerry-Graham bill might be the strongest energy security legislation yet in the Senate—maybe even more so than the (quite strong) Bingaman/Energy Committee bill.  That is all speculation, of course, since there is no Kerry-Graham bill as of yet, but it is something worth watching in the coming weeks.

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