Senate Democrats backed away from an energy bill months in the works Thursday – leaving many pundits and the public alike to wonder what will come next.
Although Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he didn’t have the votes necessary to pass the bill, he didn’t say whether Democrats would try again later.
However, a report by ClearView Energy Partners, LLC, expects Reid to introduce a scaled-down version of the bill by Friday afternoon.
The bill is expected to hit four points: Land and Water Conservation Act funding, incentives for natural gas vehicles, a $5 billion home efficient incentive package and a provision to raise the oil spill liability cap to $10 billion under the Oil Pollution Act.
Kevin Book, managing director of research at ClearView Energy Partners, LLC, said he thinks the possibility of a comprehensive energy bill is dead.
“This was sort of a unique, once-in-an-industrial revolution compromise,” he said.
The recent bill marks the second time the House has pushed through a tough energy bill only to have the Senate back out, which Book said shows the difficulty of passing such a comprehensive measure.
Book said one of the main problems with the bill was that it required spending at a time when a major bill would have to be financially neutral.
“The point is to put a sugar coating on a bitter pill,” he said. “There are lots of provisions in the bill that would have been impossible to meet. It would require a lot of bargains.”
Lisa Margonelli, director of the New America Foundation Energy Policy Initiative, also said the original legislation will be hard to bring back in the future.
“It was bizarre the way the Democrats acted,” she said. “They just walked out and said ‘we don’t have the votes.’”
Margonelli said the setup for the bill was very favorable considering America is experiencing the worst oil spill in history and President Barack Obama’s urging to pass energy legislation.
The bill – which had already passed the House – simply died in the Senate, hanging backers in the House out to dry, she said.
“It’s going to be hard to pass it in the future, since some legislators will question the Senate’s resolve,” she said. “They just blew it off.”
It remains to be seen whether Democrats will attempt to push the bill through during the “lame duck session” if they lose control of the Senate.
Book said the original bill would be tough to pass during the lame duck session should Democrats lose control because of its immense impact.
“It’s certainly natural to try to leave a legacy on the way out,” he said. “But this has a lot greater impact than most legislation since it would be an industrial rewrite and a GDP tax.”
Though the bill – cheered by President Obama to achieve his goal set during the international climate conference – failed to gain ground in the Senate, a report Friday by the World Resource Institute looks at the possibility of meeting Obama’s target rate under current laws.
In a nutshell, the report finds that, under current laws, it will be difficult to achieve Obama’s goal of a 17 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, even with state and federal governments working at full force.
“A comprehensive reform required a number of factors,” Book said. “I don’t think it’s a very ardent prospect to try to push for it in the future.”