Senate Democrats shrink energy-bill aims

— Conceding they can’t find enough votes for the measure, Senate Democrats on Thursday abandoned efforts to put together a comprehensive energy bill that would seek to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Instead, Democrats will push for a more limited bill that would increase the liability costs oil companies would pay after spills such as the one in the Gulf of Mexico and would create additional incentives for the development of natural-gas vehicles and provide rebates to people who buy products that reduce home energy use. They did not release details of the proposal, but Senate Democrats said they expected to find GOP support and pass it in the next two weeks.

Democrats have not ruled out pushing for a more comprehensive bill when Congress returns from its August recess or in the session after the November elections, although it’s not clear that any of the Democrats or Republicans who now oppose a more expansive measure would change their votes. Republicans have long argued that the bill, by seeking to limit emissions, would lead to higher energy costs for American consumers, a view some conservative Democrats also have taken.

Democrats who advocated the broader measure didn’t hide their disappointment in falling short. Carol Browner, who heads the White House’s Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, said, “Obviously everyone is disappointed,” and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., the primary author of the comprehensive bill, said the legislation Democrats will take up next week is “admittedly narrow.”

“We know where we are. We know we don’t have the votes,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Reid blamed the GOP for blocking the bill, noting that no Republicans in the Senate had said they would back it. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who had helped write the comprehensive measure with Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Kerry, announced in June he would no longer back the measure, arguing Congress should pursue a smaller, more targeted measure.

But despite weeks of meetings to reach a compromise, Democrats themselves were deeply divided on the legislation.

Efforts to put together a major bill to limit carbon emissions and encourage the use of alternative energy sources had long been considered doomed in the Senate even though the House approved last June a bill that would set a limit on overallemissions of greenhouse gases while allowing utilities and other emitters to trade pollution permits.

A group of Democrats whose states produce coal, such as Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., thought the bill could lead to increased energy costs in their states, while others worried about pushing such a contentious political issue after Democrats had already passed the stimulus and health-care bills.

But after the Gulf oil spill, President Barack Obama sought to push the public and Congress to back comprehensive approach, making the case that the accident illustrated the importance of the U.S. reducing its dependence on oil. In a speech last month in Pittsburgh, he said, “The votes may not be there right now, but I intend to find them in the coming months.”

But in the weeks after the spill, Kerry, who had months ago stopped pushing the socalled cap and trade measure the House had passed, failed to win backing among his colleagues for a pared-back measure that would limit greenhouse gas emissions by electric utilities.

Kerry said Obama had pledged to stay involved and keep working for a broader bill, but the longtime senator’s remarks hinted at the challenge: He said it would pass “much sooner” than the decades it took his late colleague Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., to get comprehensive health-care bill through Congress.

The decision by Democrats means two major issues they had pledged to take on this year, energy and immigration, could remain unresolved before the midterm elections.

Front Section, Pages 5 on 07/23/2010

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