Dems seek to salvage climate provisions after White House meeting

A much-hyped White House meeting Tuesday between President Barack Obama
and a bipartisan group of senators produced no breakthrough as the
political sands continue to run out on passing a climate bill this year.

But Democratic leaders may seek to keep the issue alive by using energy and oil spill legislation as the base for a Senate floor battle that would allow them to salvage climate provisions — possibly ones limited just to electric power plants.

{mosads}“While it was a good conversation, when you’ve got that many members with that many different opinions, I think it’s fair to say that there was no consensus about what the path forward is,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the ranking member on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and one of nearly two dozen lawmakers to attend the meeting.

Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who did not address reporters as usual following Tuesday’s Democratic policy lunch, said that while many Democrats think putting a price on carbon is “the right way to go,” it was “obvious that a lot of different people have different ideas.”

“Everyone thought their idea was better than the other, so we’re still reaching for a consensus of what we could take to the floor,” Manley said.

The plan is still to bring an energy bill of some sort to the floor in July, he said.

Speculation is rising on and off Capitol Hill that the base bill — to which amendments would be added — would be a modified version of an energy bill passed last year with bipartisan support in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) said Obama reiterated “he thinks it’s important to send a price signal on carbon,” but also encouraged the 23 senators to “aim high but at the end of the day hit something, and to hit a sweet spot.”

That sweet spot, Carper said, could be to start with last year’s energy bill “with some tweaks” and allow a series of amendments. That could include a utility-only carbon pricing plan, fuel efficiency increases from Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), a bipartisan plan to increase the production of plug-in electric vehicles and tax provisions to incentivize green energy manufacturing, he said.

Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), who has long advocated bringing up last year’s energy bill to start off the floor debate, said Democrats need 60 votes just to allow that debate to start.

“In the end that really is what matters — do we have 60 votes to put something on the floor?” said Dorgan, who attended the White House meeting.

Plans addressing the Gulf of Mexico oil spill will be the driver for any energy and climate package, notably a bipartisan spill response bill the Energy and Natural Resources Committee is set to take up Wednesday.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is also expected to approve a plan from Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) that retroactively eliminates any economic damages liability cap for BP in the Gulf spill and for oil companies for future disasters.

In a growing sign that liberal Democrats may be setting aside an effort to push through an economy-wide carbon pricing plan, one of the authors of such a plan offered to narrow the bill, and said the utility-only idea is in play.

{mosads}“We are prepared to scale back the reach of our legislation in order to try and find that place of compromise, because we believe — and I think the president believes — very strongly that what is important is for America to get started,” Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said afterward.

“There are any number of variations on how we could do that. That would certainly be one of them,” Kerry said of a utility-focused plan.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who has co-authored a three-sector carbon pricing plan with Kerry, said some lawmakers — he did not name them — indicated a new willingness at the meeting to consider carbon emissions provisions.

“Some of our colleagues who up until this time have been at least publicly reluctant about … putting a price on carbon pollution, said they would be willing to discuss limited forms of doing that in this bill,” he said. “To me, that is a breakthrough that Sen. Kerry and I want to take advantage of by sitting and talking with those colleagues across party lines as quickly as we can.”

Carper echoed that sentiment, saying there is a growing “willingness to focus just on the utility sector” in a carbon pricing plan. “The question is, do we get started or do we wait until next year to do something?” Carper said. “There’s a real eagerness to get started.”

Centrist Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and Olympia Snowe (Maine) are two who are backing the utility-only concept. Snowe attended the White House meeting; Graham did not.

But Democratic support for that approach is not a given. Several Democrats at the meeting with Obama — including Dorgan, Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Blanche Lincoln (Ark.), Jay Rockefeller (W.Va.) and Maria Cantwell (Wash.) — have cited strong concerns over utility-only.

Murkowski said the meeting did not advance the climate effort any further than an earlier discussion Obama hosted in March.

“The only difference I can tell is that there were more people at this one than there were last time,” she said. “But those of us who were there for a repeat, we all pretty much said the same thing, we all heard the same thing.”