12-10-07 by dugan
The only sure result of the "ping-pong" negotiating game the House and Senate are playing this week on the energy bill is that it will come out weaker. Even a provision like one that actually passed the Senate last year, requiring electric utilities to eventually use 15% renewable energy, is withering under lobbying by utilities and the oil industry.
The bottom line: last year, Democrats didn’t threaten a filibuster of a Republican-generated bill and it passed with 50-some votes. This year everything of significance gets a filibuster threat. The 60-vote requirement gives industry lobbyists a rocket boost.
Here’s a good run-down from Bloomberg of anti-renwables lobbying (a lot of it by Rudy Giuliani’s PR firm), and a recounting of the Senate’s backsliding on the renewables issue from U.S. News online.
As OilWatchdog worried in an earlier post, the ambitious energy bill may end up being no more than a compromise bill on auto efficiency standards, including a separate category for SUVs that negates a lot of its effect.