Political Roundup
Posted July 30, 2010 at 10:45 am 
Filed in: This week, House democrats released their oil spill response plan, and shortly thereafter, Senator Harry Reid published the Senate’s legislation, the “Clean Energy Jobs and Oil Company Accountability Act of 2010.”
In Thursday’s E&E Daily, Katie Howell and Robin Bravender compare the two bills, “The House legislation focuses on oil spill measures, because that chamber passed a comprehensive climate and energy bill last year. Reid had hoped to combine cap-and-trade provisions with the Senate’s oil spill bill, but his plans took many hits in an effort to appease naysayers and garner votes. As expected, the scaled-down energy package omits more controversial provisions, including a price on carbon and a renewable electricity standard.”
President Obama reacted positively to the bill announcements. The NY Times reports, “‘That legislation is an important step in the right direction,’ the president said of the pared-back House and Senate bills. ‘But I want to emphasize it’s only the first step. And I intend to keep pushing for broader reform, including climate legislation, because if we’ve learned anything from the tragedy in the gulf, it’s that our current energy policy is unsustainable.’”
In the same article, Senator Reid echoes the President’s sentiment that the Senate bill is a stepping stone in the right direction, “This bill does not address every issue of importance to our nation’s energy challenges, and we have to continue to work to find bipartisan agreement on a comprehensive bill to help reduce pollution and deal with the very real threat that global warming poses.”
Some senators didn’t react so positively. Business Week reports that Senator Mark Begich (D-AL), “has several problems with the Reid proposal, including the elimination of a $75 million cap on economic liability from an oil spill.” His colleague, Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AL), states, “While the bill contains some ‘good ideas,’ including encouraging deployment of electric cars in certain cities and offering incentives for agencies to power their fleets with natural gas, overall, it just cobbles together provisions.”
Despite these critiques, Senator Reid clearly believes that his bill has a realistic shot at achieving the requisite 60 votes for passage. In the NY Times, he states, “this is a good bill that deserves bipartisan support.” The Wall Street Journal reports, “The bill reflects a number of compromises Mr. Reid has brokered in recent days between the liberal and moderate wings of his party. In a concession to lawmakers from states heavily dependent on coal-fired electricity, the legislation does not include a mandate on electric power companies to raise their use of renewable electricity, despite lobbying by wind-energy companies and some Democratic senators. It would, however, provide various incentives—such as rebates and loan guarantees—to encourage the purchase of vehicles that run on natural gas or electric batteries, part of a broader effort by Democrats to reduce U.S. reliance on oil.”
On Tuesday, the Electrification Coalition praised the inclusion of electric vehicles as a point of bipartisan agreement in Senator Reid’s bill. President and CEO Robbie Diamond states, “We are pleased to see electrification deployment communities, which will guarantee the success of electric vehicles beyond early adaptors, will be included in this legislation. The deployment community concept has broad support, from mayors across the country to business leaders to the White House to Republicans and Democrats in both the House and the Senate.”
With the confirmation of Elena Kagan expected early next week, the schedule is tight for a vote on energy before August recess. If there is time, we will see whether bipartisan provisions like electrification, which passed through the Senate Committee of Energy and Natural Resources with a 19-4 vote, will help generate the momentum necessary to reach 60 votes.
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