The Senate leadership on Thursday was considering a Democratic-initiated proposal to substitute last year’s energy bill — which passed the Senate by a vote of 88-11 in April 2002 — for the current energy bill and pass it before leaving for the August recess (see Daily GPI, April 26, 2002).

The entire Senate was in a holding pattern throughout much of the day awaiting word on the leadership’s decision. The turn of events was put in motion early Thursday by Minority Leader Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD) after Republican Majority Leader Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN) filed a substitute for the entire energy bill late Wednesday night and a petition for cloture which would limit debate if 60 votes are obtained.

The Frist substitute bill is 829 pages, while the current energy bill is 467 pages. The Frist substitute includes the text of S. 14, as well as the substitute electricity title offered by Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-NM), the tax incentives title, an ethanol proposal and the Bond-Levin amendment on corporate average fuel economy.

Daschle led off Thursday’s exchange asking, “What would have been wrong with taking [the] bill that 88 of us voted for last year and starting with that?” Frist responded, “if we have the opportunity to take that bill up…let’s do it and let’s pass it today and then we can move on.” Assistant Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) followed up with “you’ve got yourself a deal.”

Frist said he wanted to first consult with Domenici, the floor manager of the energy bill.

Republican and Democratic leaders then retired mid-Thursday to consider their strategy while western senators on the floor continued to harangue over government failures in the western energy crisis. They were still in meetings at 6 p.m. Senate leaders have vowed to pass energy legislation before leaving at the end of this week for the August recess.

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) said while he would prefer to pass this year’s energy bill, “if the best that we can do is pass last year’s bill, let’s do it.” It’s not a “perfect” measure, but it has bipartisan support, he noted.

“This is a story that nobody could have possibly made up,” said a Capitol press aide. Both sides are “seriously considering” reviving the Democrat-crafted energy legislation that the Senate passed last year. “This is a real moving target,” he said, adding that he a decision on how the Senate would proceed might come late Thursday.

“This is new ground we’re breaking here” if the Senate opts to “just throw up its hand and say ‘Let’s do what we did last year,'” said an energy source and close Capitol Hill observer. While “it’s not the way you want to do things…it might be the best thing” because it will move a Senate energy bill to the conference committee, where the real work is done, he noted.

“The law doesn’t get written on the Senate floor…All you got to do is get [a bill] across the finish line and then you can get down to the details,” the energy source said. “I feel at this point the Senate needs to wrap something up and get it out of the chamber.” The energy bill has been on the Senate floor since mid-May, but only about 18 days have been spent debating it.

Congress has been trying for more than two years to pass energy legislation and send it to the president.

Senate progress on the energy bill has been extremely slow-going this week, with lawmakers jumping from issue to issue and in between debating energy. Frist on Thursday accused Democrats of engaging in “obstruction, flat out obstruction” of passage of an energy bill before the Senate recesses. But Democrats and other Capitol Hill observers faulted Frist for scheduling votes on controversial judicial nominations and trade agreements during the week of the energy bill debate.

“A lot of people are angry the Senate is wasting time on something [judicial nomination] that will go nowhere,” said the energy source. There’s “a lot of frustration” and it’s directed at Frist for diverting attention to issues other than energy, he noted.

It’s almost as if the Senate has “attention deficit disorder,” said Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-ND). “We are fiddling while our energy is burning,” intoned Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS).

Congress last year failed to reconcile the House and Senate versions of what was proposed as the Energy Policy Act of 2002. A major sticking point was and continues to be future oil and natural gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). The Senate bitterly opposes ANWR development, while the House in its energy bill passed in April supports future exploration and production in the Arctic refuge. Both houses back an Alaskan pipeline, and propose billions of dollars in tax credits and incentives for independent oil and natural gas producers, alternative energy/renewable fuels and energy research and development.

The 2002 Senate bill does not call for regulation of over-the-counter derivatives trading, which had been pushed by California legislators, or other post-Enron reforms. The House bill, however, bolsters FERC’s enforcement authority somewhat — it gives the agency more penalty authority, stronger investigative tools and the ability to conduct price discovery.

Both the House and Senate measures include electricity titles, but they don’t address standard market design (SMD) in a substantial way. The Senate bill extends the authority of FERC to public power and rural cooperatives, keeps in place the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act’s mandatory-purchase requirement for qualifying facilities; and endorses the direction that FERC has taken on regional transmission organizations.

©Copyright 2003 Intelligence Press Inc. All rights reserved. The preceding news report may not be republished or redistributed, in whole or in part, in any form, without prior written consent of Intelligence Press, Inc.