The Republican heads of Congress’ energy committees want to get down to work, and getting members of their party to exercise restraint will consume a good deal of their time as they undertake hefty policy and spending bills.
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., are crafting companion energy bills that would address a broad set of issues, such as pipelines, exports, energy efficiency and permitting. But what they’re not planning to include is just as telling.
The Environmental Protection Agency isn’t expected to be a part of the sweeping measure. Ending a 40-year-old ban on crude oil exports, which has made some Republicans skittish, might not make it onto bill. Constructing the Keystone XL pipeline, in the likely event Congress can’t override President Obama’s expected veto of legislation that passed Wednesday, might not make it either.
“The right answer is probably, ‘I don’t know,’ but I would say probably not,” Upton said of including Keystone XL. “We’re not going to keep banging our head against the wall.”
Congress has seen few chances of passing policy in recent years, especially on energy. The Senate acted as a backstop against House GOP legislation between 2010 and 2014, stopping bills that Democrats and Obama opposed from reaching the White House.
Questions abounded after the November elections about whether the GOP would overreach now that it controlled both chambers of Congress. But with a 2016 presidential contest looming, Republicans appear to be trying for restraint.
“I would say let’s try to keep the bills as clean as possible and show good governance,” said Dave Banks, executive vice president at the free-market American Council for Capital Formation, who was previously deputy counsel for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and an energy and environment adviser to former President George W. Bush.
“I think they have a small window to govern,” Banks said.
The approach Murkowski and Upton are taking is refreshing given the fairly clear path Republicans now have to get legislation to the White House, said John Feehery, president of communications and director of government affairs with Quinn Gillespie and Associates.
“I think Fred and Lisa understand the art of the possible and are more interested in achieving results than headlines,” Feehery said.
But their colleagues might have different ideas about loading energy and spending bills with their own priorities.
“The trick is finding the balance,” Banks said.
Murkowski said taking up broad energy legislation, which hasn’t been attempted seriously since 2007, is necessary because of the Senate’s tight schedule. The Keystone XL debate gobbled up three weeks of Senate floor time, and the Alaska Republican said she isn’t sure how many cracks the upper chamber will take at substantive energy policy.
Louis Finkel, vice president of the American Petroleum Institute, noted that Keystone XL took up “1/24th of this Congress.” He noted, however, that it’s still early in the legislative session and that he didn’t think options were limited for bringing up items such as crude oil exports.
“I do know that the leadership has a robust energy and environment platform,” Finkel told the Washington Examiner.
The Republican-led House over the years has consistently passed spending bills and other legislation that surely would have earned a veto from Obama, and there’s little reason to expect that to change. Spending bills have included numerous provisions to scuttle environmental regulations. With Wednesday’s vote, the chamber has voted to approve Keystone XL 11 times.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also wants to try to use the budget process to nix the proposed EPA carbon emissions rule for power plants, which he contends would raise energy prices and cost his state coal-mining jobs. The proposed regulation is unpopular in conservative and coal-mining states. But it remains to be seen how the Kentucky Republican wants to approach the issue.
“That’s obviously one of the big questions,” said Matt Letourneau, a spokesman with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21st Century Energy. “But at the same time I think Senator McConnell is going to want to see productive legislation out of the committees.”
Murkowski is trying to exercise care on the appropriations subcommittee she heads as well. That panel oversees the EPA and the Interior Department, but she wants to get a spending bill passed and signed. Any legislation that blocks proposed power-plant regulations would surely net a veto from Obama, as the regulations form the centerpiece of his climate change agenda.
“I’m going to have to spend a lot of time working through some of these issues. You’re going to have folks that will want to load this particular bill with a lot of different, clever ideas as to ways they can either make things happen or stop things from happening,” Murkowski said last week.
McConnell has said he doesn’t want to shut the government down, taking away one of his biggest bargaining chips. It appears Obama is prepared to go toe-to-toe with Congress to defend the EPA regulation.
“Leadership has to worry about the politics. The committee chairs have to worry about putting together solid policy,” Feehery said.
But that doesn’t mean Republicans are powerless on EPA regulations — far from it.
For example, Bennett Johnston, the former Democratic senator from Louisiana, said he could envision Obama signing a spending bill that prevents proposed stricter ozone standards — which are different from the power plant rules — from taking effect until all counties have come into compliance with the current level.
“McConnell is a very savvy legislator. He knows when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em. He’s not going to hold to that, in my judgment, and shut down the government because he can’t win,” Johnston, who now lobbies on energy issues, told the Examiner. “But there are things that you can win on, small things. And my guess is he will be very cagey and a formidable opponent for the president.”
