Senate Conservatives Block Energy Bill...Reid Offers to Keep Oil Co. Loopholes for Passage..

[KoKo]

ENERGY -- SENATE CONSERVATIVES BLOCK ENERGY BILL: This morning, the Senate failed to invoke cloture by one vote on a groundbreaking energy bill that has already passed the House. The bill would have raised corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards and create significant incentives towards renewable energy for the first time in 30 years. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said the Senate would take up the bill again today after taking out the provision shutting off tax loopholes to oil companies, which faced objections by Senate Republicans and President Bush. After the vote, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), said, "The future just failed by one vote. ... The oil companies now are celebrating in their boardrooms. ... They continue to have a deathgrip on this Senate."

"The bill represents a historic opportunity to ease America's dependence on foreign oil and to take steps in the battle against global warming, and its passage would send a message to the worlds' negotiators in Bali that Washington is at last getting serious about climate change," The New York Times noted. The Senate's vote today will likely add to others' frustration with the U.S delegation in Bali, as European nations at the conference on climate change have "threatened to boycott U.S.-led climate talks next month unless Washington" agrees to specific targets for reducing greenhouse gases. Former vice president Al Gore said today that the United States "is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali."

[e-mail]

[orion9941]

1. I am ashamed to be an American anymore.

I never thought I would ever say such a thing in my time.