There will be no massive energy bill this year, House Speaker Paul Ryan’s office said Wednesday evening.
House and Senate conferees have struggled for months to get a deal they could send to the president’s desk before the end of the year. But the election of Donald Trump slowed the process as House leaders said they would wait until next year to get a better deal under a GOP administration.
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“The conferees were not able to come to agreement on various outstanding issues in time for the House to consider a conference report,” said the Wisconsin Republican’s spokeswoman, AshLee Strong.
Senate energy committee chairwoman Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who has been leading the Senate side of the negotiations with the House, was miffed by the news and asked Ryan to reconsider.
“The House may want to claim that this bill cannot move forward because we are running out of time,” she said in a statement. “The reality is that the House is attempting to run us out of time, in order to prevent this bill from moving forward, even though it contains the priorities of dozens of its members. I urge my House colleagues to reconsider and to allow our conference report to come up for a vote before we adjourn.” It is unlikely the House will do so.
The Washington Examiner reported Monday that the bill was likely dead.
The Energy Policy Modernization Act of 2016 has been lingering in conference committee all fall as House and Senate leaders tried to hash out what they could and could not live with in the sprawling bill, which looked to boost electric grid security, increase U.S. shale gas exports, relax regulations and improve the efficiency of commercial buildings and homes.
When the bill passed the Senate in April, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky praised it, saying it “marks the first broad energy legislation to move through the Senate since the Bush administration.”
“It’s clear that this energy legislation is much-needed when it comes to bringing our aging infrastructure and policies in line with current — and future — demands.”
However, recent back-and-forth between House and Senate conferees suggested over the Thanksgiving holiday that progress was slowing in reaching a deal before the end of the year. In addition, McConnell has prioritized passing a short-term budget resolution by the end of the week, although he had said there was “some hope” of passing the bill.
