Weekly Political Roundup
Posted September 3, 2010 at 6:02 am 
Filed in: This week, a new 12-18 month waiting period was announced, and both Democrats and Republicans in Washington let out a collective groan of frustration. The news, however, was not of another delay in the seemingly interminable wait for the oil spill or energy bill, but instead the announcement of Stephen Strasburg’s need for season-ending elbow surgery. In terms of energy, the news actually took a slightly more positive spin.
On Tuesday, The Hill reported on a conference call with Majority Leader Harry Reid in which he “suggested passing energy legislation could be more likely during a lame-duck session. He noted the Senate would resume work after the recess but added, ‘Maybe, after the elections, we can get some more Republicans to work with us. We are going to continue working on this. You won’t hear the last of us until we adjourn sine die.’” Reid also cited Sam Brownback as a potential partner because of his prior support of a renewable-electricity standard. Senator Brownback was also a supporter of electric car legislation in the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
If Reid truly believes Republicans will be more willing to negotiate in a lame duck, he may next turn to Lisa Murkowski, whose official defeat in Alaska sent shockwaves throughout the political—and legislative—world. Stephen Stromberg of the Washington Post PostPartisan blog states, “She is one of the last few Republicans in Congress who favors addressing climate change robustly. She has even—in her tortured, elected-from-a-deep-red-state way—favored putting a price on carbon emissions, a rational policy that the rest of her party has demagogued to death with dishonest implications about how much it would cost Americans.” Regardless of Stromberg’s defeated tone, Murkowski now sits in a unique position as a past supporter of cap and trade who longer needs to fear political attack ads or election year politics as handcuffs to her support of energy legislation.
Of course, yesterday’s rig explosion in the Gulf could very well change the entire dynamic. It is important to note that there appear to have been no fatalities in the accident (but it does continue to raise concerns about safety). If it leads to another spill, even one much smaller than the Deepwater Horizon crisis, then the energy debate could once again be thrown into flux. Democrats, currently divided on liability provisions, may be more likely to come together, in which case oil producers in the Gulf had better look out.
Not all political and policy debates take place on Capitol Hill, of course, a truism in evidence this week as the EPA proposed new guidelines for vehicle labeling. The Wall Street Journal reports, “Under the proposed changes, a new label design would carry a large letter grade assigned by regulators. Under the system, the only cars that would receive an A-plus, A or A-minus would be electrics and plug-in hybrids, the government said.” The new labeling proposals, in fact, are far more complex than a simple letter grade would indicate, and there was no guarantee that EVs would do so well. There was much talk leading up to the rule of whether upstream emissions from electricity generation might be included in the calculations. In the end, however, EVs will be treated like all other vehicles: only the emissions coming from the vehicles will count. There are other aspects of the rules that will come under scrutiny, including how best to calculate fuel costs for PHEVs that use both electricity and gasoline. There can be little doubt that there will be much debate over these and other issues in the 60-day comment period for the proposed new regulations.
It will be a rough September for the Nationals without Stephen Strasburg. The question now is whether conditions are better for energy security legislation.
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