Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said Wednesday he planned to vote in favor of a measure to extend tax credits for renewable energy and energy efficiency, but he expressed disappointment that it would not have revenue raisers to offset the $5.5 billion cost of the package.

Given the absence of the offsets, “I will cast my vote with less than full enthusiasm,” Bingaman said on the Senate floor. The Senate was expected to vote later Wednesday on attaching the renewable/efficiency tax amendment, sponsored by Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and John Ensign (R-NV), to housing stimulus legislation (see Daily GPI, April 4).

The bill and amendment are expected to clear the Senate, but the Cantwell-Ensign measure could run into problems in the House, which favors funding a renewable/energy tax credit package by raising revenue from other areas, such as stripping oil and natural gas producers of tax credits that were provided by Congress in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Bingaman acknowledged that the Cantwell-Ensign measure could be stripped from the housing bill during a House-Senate conference.

“If Cantwell and Ensign succeed in putting their $5.5 billion in renewable energy taxes on the pending housing stimulus bill with no pay-fors, this may be no more than a temporary psychological positive. These provisions appear to have a high likelihood of getting stripped in conference,” cautioned energy analyst Christine Tezak of Stanford Group Co.

She noted that Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the panel, are working with the Bush administration to find revenue raises for a renewable/efficiency tax extender package. “In the end, we still expect it would be their bill, not Cantwell’s, that may ultimately find its way into law…The House will be hard pressed to not accept it, even if they’d rather that the oil [and natural gas] companies pay for it.”

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