With no hope of actually dealing with pollution causing carbon emissions, climate change, and our over-reliance on fossil fuels in sight, Reid has pared down an energy bill to the bare bones. CSM has the basics:
Sen. Reid said Tuesday that he believed he finally had the 60 votes necessary to avoid a Republican filibuster.
"This bill does not address every issue of importance to our nation's energy challenges, and we have to continue to work to find bipartisan agreement on a comprehensive bill to help reduce pollution and deal with the very real threat that global warming poses," Reid said in a statement. "But this is a good bill that deserves bipartisan support, and continues us along the path toward a clean energy future."
The bill includes as its centerpiece "oil spill response" legislation that would: require BP to pay for damage from its spill; require oil companies to invest in new spill cleanup and prevention technologies; improve federal spill response; reform the Minerals Management Service; and update maritime laws.
But other aspects of the bill, according to a draft summary of the legislation, step into other energy arenas by:
- Providing incentives for turning the nation‘s heavy truck fleet to natural gas and toward electrification of the nation‘s transportation sector.
- Promoting "clean energy job creation" providing $5 billion of rebates to encourage homeowners to make efficiency upgrades as part of the Home Star program.
- Fully funding a Land and Water Conservation Fund over the next five years to ensure that vital US lands and waters are protected into the future from climate change damage.
- ncreasing the $1 billion liability cap of the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund to $5 billion and increasing fees to pay for it by requiring that oil companies pay 49 cents per barrel into the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund.
Reid made the case for the bill in economic terms [sub req]:
Reid, whose state has a 14-percent unemployment rate, cited one estimate that the measure would create 200,000 new jobs. Likewise Stabenow, who also hails from an economically depressed state with double-digit unemployment, announced, “I see this very much as a jobs issue.”
“If we have to do it step by step, I guess we will, but we’re absolutely committed to a comprehensive energy policy in this country,” she said.
Most of those jobs will come from the Home Star program included in the bill, which in the draft summary sent from the majority leader's office would include "$5 billion in incentives for the Home Star program which will offer point of sale rebates to encourage homeowners to make energy efficiency upgrades." It seems the likeliest avenue left for any kind of jobs bill we've got at this point, so there's at least that.