As President Obama called on Congress to act quickly on the economic stimulus bill, the Senate Monday invoked cloture on a slimmed-down, bipartisan substitute amendment to the recovery bill that seeks to jump-start a green economy, including provisions to promote greater production of renewable fuels, new power transmission facilities and increased energy efficiency and conservation.

The compromise measure cleared the procedural hurdle by 61-36, with the backing of three Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. The substitute amendment (HR 1), which pared the cost of the stimulus package to $829 billion from $900 billion-plus, was hammered out by a bipartisan group of senators led by Collins and Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) late last week.

While Democrats had the votes to pass their $819 billion stimulus bill without any support from Republicans, they needed the votes of at least two to three Republicans to overcome a filibuster and get the measure through the Senate. A final vote is scheduled Tuesday at around noon EST, and is to be followed by conference to reconcile the differences in the House and Senate packages. Congress has set a self-imposed deadline of Feb. 13 to send the economic stimulus package to Obama (see Daily GPI, Feb. 9).

“That’s going to be a very tough conference,” acknowledged Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee. The conference may drag into the Presidents Day weekend if the House and Senate have difficulty reconciling the differences in their two bills, said energy analysts Christine Tezak and K. Whitney Stanco of Stanford Group Co.

To the few Republicans who supported the bill, Boxer said, “Thank you. I know it’s hard [to vote with Senate Democrats]. You’re reaching out to this new president.”

But she had harsh words for those Republicans who argued that the Collins-Nelson substitute amendment would drive up the federal deficit. “I didn’t see those bitter tears during the Bush years” when federal deficit shot up significantly. The Bush administration and Capitol Hill had an “open checkbook” for Iraq, the wealthy and the oil and natural gas industry, Boxer said.

“This is not a bipartisan agreement,” said fiscal conservative Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), adding it was a simple case of three Republicans joining Democrats in a “partisan agreement.” That’s three out of 41 Republicans in the Senate and 178 Republicans in the House, he noted.

Sen. Mike Ensi (R-WY) likened the measure to the fairy tale where “the emperor has no clothes…[This bill] spends everything we’ve got on nothing we’re sure about…I’ve had enough of this bailout baloney.”

The Senate measure includes more than $19 billion in energy tax breaks and incentives to promote renewable fuels, energy efficiency, alternative energy and conservation, according to Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Spending in the Collins-Nelson substitute amendment was estimated at $39 billion on renewable fuels, efficiency, conservation and new power transmission facilities.

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