Reid abandons oil-spill, energy legislation until after summer break

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Tuesday yanked the oil-spill response bill for the summer, giving Democrats a talking point about GOP obstruction even though some of their own members were blocking it.

Reid had planned to hold debates and votes on competing Democratic and Republican spill plans Wednesday, less than a week after the House passed its own spill response package.

{mosads}But in announcing plans to push consideration of the bill until at least September, Reid said: “It’s clear Republicans were going to be determined to stand in the way of everything.

“It’s a sad day when you can’t find a handful of Republicans to support a bill” that holds BP accountable for spill liability and creates green jobs, he told reporters.

Neither bill was expected to be able to overcome the necessary 60-vote threshold, fueling Republican arguments that Reid’s intent all along was to give Democrats ammunition for the stump ahead of midterm elections in which the GOP is expected to rebound.

Senate Democratic leaders immediately employed that strategy, linking the chamber’s failure to pass a spill response with the message that Republicans are blocking their agenda.

“This is what we’ve been living with now for two whole years,” said Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) at Tuesday’s press conference.

“That kind of bill, folks, ought to pass 100 to nothing,” he said of the oil spill and energy plan Democratic leaders have touted. “But it’s not. Not in this Senate, where [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell’s [R-Ky.] ‘just say no’ caucus walks in lockstep.”  

But Democratic leaders have yet to earn the support from their oil-state and centrist members, who say the proposal would price small and independent companies out of the business of drilling offshore and would kill industry jobs.

“Sen. Reid is predictably blaming Republicans for standing in the way of a bill that he threw together in secret and without input from almost any other member of the Senate,” Senate Energy and Natural Resources ranking member Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said in a statement.

 “The truth is he saw the writing on the wall. The Republican proposal is far more responsible and far less costly than the Democrat bill,” she said. “The majority leader didn’t pull his bill because of Republican opposition; he pulled it because his fellow Democrats were deserting him, planning to vote against it, and supported the concepts of the Republican bill.”

Murkowski and other Senate GOP leaders have pushed an alternative plan that avoids the Democratic idea of a retroactive lift on liability limits for oil and gas producers involved in a spill. Republicans would have the president raise the $75 million liability cap based on a company’s safety record and the risk of a drilling project, among other factors.

{mosads} The Republican plan would ensure that coastal states more quickly receive a guaranteed share of revenue earned by producing oil and gas in federal waters. It also lifts a temporary Obama administration deepwater drilling ban for those firms that meet federal safety requirements.

 Oil-state Senate Democrats — like Mary Landrieu (La.) and Mark Begich (Alaska) — prefer how Republicans handle revenue sharing and the temporary drilling moratorium. They are trying to help lead an effort to find a bridge between the Democratic and Republican liability proposals.

 Landrieu and Begich are working separately on industry-supported proposals that involve setting up a mutual insurance fund that would have producers share the cost of future spills.

Those efforts are part of larger discussions that include Democratic leaders like Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (N.M.), Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) — a leading Senate critic of offshore drilling — who was the lead author of the retroactive removal of the liability cap in the broader Democratic leadership oil spill plan.

Begich said Tuesday that Democrats are getting “closer and closer” to achieving consensus in their own ranks.

Reid pledged to move ahead with the legislation in the fall, vowing in the meantime to “work for Republican votes.” He said it will be easier to do so after the summer break “because we’ve had some very good conversations.”

 “I think before the end of the year, the answer is absolutely yes” that energy legislation will be passed, Reid said.

 Reid’s decision to abandon the legislation also comes amid heat from Democrats who say the energy provisions in the legislation — which focus on home-efficiency retrofits and natural gas-powered and electric vehicles — were too modest.

 “I think there was substantial concern on the Democratic side that the energy bill did not do enough,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

She said some feel “very strongly” that there needs to be a renewable electricity standard.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said waiting gives lawmakers a chance to gain traction for adding a national renewable electricity standard, which would require utilities to provide escalating amounts of power from sources like wind and solar energy.

“I thought, as I was listening to the discussion, ‘Mmm, this could be good. Maybe we can beef [the bill] up a little to be more meaningful,’ ” she said.

Ben Geman contributed to this article.

This post was originally posted at 1:59 p.m. and updated at 3:59 p.m. and 8:55 p.m.