Senate Republicans mounted a late-session offensive drive last week to bring energy legislation before the entire upper chamber, but by the end of the week, when the dust had settled, it wasn’t clear if they had gained any real ground.

Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) got the ball rolling last Wednesday when he filed the House comprehensive energy bill, H.R. 4, on the Senate floor to become an amendment to a Democrat-crafted economic-stimulus package that was being debated. But Republican senators, employing some procedural moves, blocked the $73-billion stimulus package from coming to the floor for a vote later that day, which left the fate of the energy amendment in doubt.

At press time Friday, Craig’s H.R. amendment was “still pending,” said an aide to Craig. Another aide told NGI “things are so fluid right now” with respect to the amendment.

During a Capitol Hill press briefing last week, Craig said he would continue to press ahead with plans to attach the H.R. 4 bill if the Democratic stimulus package survived, which it didn’t. However, if a “truly bipartisan” stimulus measure emerges, which negotiators reportedly were working on last week, he noted he would withdraw his amendment on the condition that Majority Leader Tom Daschle (S-SD) would give Republicans a date-certain to debate energy after the Thanksgiving break. The Senate adjourned Friday until Nov. 27.

As a possible alternative to the stimulus bill, Craig suggested that Republicans might try to attach H.R. 4 to a pending farm bill after the Thanksgiving break. “Most of our farmers understand that good farm policy is good energy policy, or vice versa. So that is not an incompatible relationship,” he told reporters.

“We told [Daschle] time and time again that if he did not give a date-certain for which to debate a comprehensive energy package that it would get filed on the economic-stimulus package…So [Daschle] has refused us, [and] now he has to live with it,” Craig said.

Daschle has said “no way” will he permit energy to be debated as part of the economic-stimulus legislation. Furthermore, he has excluded energy from the list of “must-pass” bills that the Senate needs to address before it adjourns for the year. Even Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) has backed away from any GOP effort to tack energy on to a stimulus bill.

Craig’s amendment excluded the $34 billion tax title of H.R. 4 in an attempt to make it more acceptable to the Bush White House and Democrat critics. However, it still contains the most controversial provision that calls for about 2,000 acres of the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to be opened to oil and natural gas exploration and production.

Senate Democrats, such as Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and John Kerry of Massachusetts, have vowed to filibuster any Republican proposal that would open the door to ANWR drilling. Republicans would have to muster 60 votes to override a Democratic filibuster to bring their proposal to the floor for a vote, which many Capitol Hill observers say they unlikely could get.

But Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-AK), a leading proponent of drilling in ANWR, turned the tables on the Democrats last Thursday when he threatened to mount a filibuster to key legislation that the leadership hopes to pass before the session ends, in order to force a vote on the ANWR issue.

In a 14-minute speech on the Senate floor, he said “I guess I’m going to have to filibuster something around here — there’s a few things [bills] left — to get some kind of commitment from the Democratic leadership [for] a vote on this issue in a timely manner.”

Murkowski put Senate colleagues on “alert” that he and other Republicans “[were] not going to let this issue go away. We’re going to force a vote…or force a filibuster because this time this issue is going to come up before this body and be addressed once and for all.”

He accused Daschle of intentionally blocking the ANWR issue from coming to the floor. “We have that right” to debate the issue, Murkowski insisted, adding that “all we want is a vote.”

The Senate passed legislation to open up ANWR in 1995, he said, but President Clinton vetoed it. “It’s not going to be vetoed by the White House this time around.”

While the Bush administration is pushing for Congress to pass energy legislation that includes ANWR this session, it would prefer that it be handled in stand-alone legislation rather than as part of an economic-stimulus bill. But Murkowski contends the energy bill would not be out of place in the stimulus package, given that it would create about 250,000 new “direct” jobs and would add about $3.6 billion to the federal coffers through federal lease sales.

“I would challenge all [Senate] members to come up with a better stimulus than that associated with opening up that small sliver of ANWR,” he said.

Also on Capitol Hill last week, a contingent of Democratic lawmakers — Sens. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, Lieberman, Barbara Boxer of California, and Mark Dayton of Minnesota — held a concurrent press conference with actor Robert Redford, a staunch foe of drilling on ANWR, to oppose the Republican measure.

Despite this late push by Republicans, Capitol Hill observers aren’t betting on an energy bill emerging from Congress this year. “It’s unlikely,” said one, but he conceded it’s “possible.”

If the GOP “[are] not successful in attaching a bill, I think they will be successful in negotiating an agreement [on a time for debate] with Daschle. Either way, it would be viewed as a win” for the Republicans, said Martin Edwards, director of legislative affairs for the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (INGAA). “At this point, they want time to have the debate…They want to lock in a specific timeframe” for the debate.

At the other end of Pennsylvania Ave. last week, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and Interior Secretary Gale Norton met with White House officials to discuss “ways to get the energy bill going this year” in the Senate, noted one source. “This shows they are putting emphasis” on this.

Meanwhile, Senate Energy Committee Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) has finished a 400-page mega-energy bill that he and other committee members have been working on, said a Democratic spokesman for the Senate panel, adding that the measure already has been circulated to other Senate committees that share jurisdiction. The legislation includes provisions on electricity, efficiency, oil and gas policy, climate policy and research and development, he noted. ANWR not surprisingly is absent from the measure.

The mostly Democrat-crafted legislation is expected to be forwarded to Daschle after Thanksgiving. But, the spokesman noted, “Daschle hasn’t been asking for it” since energy “is not an urgent priority of his” in the remaining days of the session.

©Copyright 2001 Intelligence Press Inc. Allrights reserved. The preceding news report may not be republishedor redistributed, in whole or in part, in any form, without priorwritten consent of Intelligence Press, Inc.