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2 Energy Bills, Including Windfall Tax, Stall in Senate
WASHINGTON — A Democratic proposal to impose heavier taxes on big oil companies stalled in the Senate on Tuesday as Republicans and Democrats offered different ideas on how to deal with soaring energy costs.
A bill that would have rolled back some $17 billion in tax breaks on Big Oil and pressured the companies to invest in new energy sources by hitting them with a windfall-profits tax if they did not failed to get enough votes to move forward. Fifty-one senators voted to bring the measure up for consideration, but that was nine short of the number needed under Senate rules. Forty-three senators, most of them Republicans, voted “no.”
The oil-tax proposal was one of two energy-related bills that failed to advance. The other was a proposal to amend the Internal Revenue Code by providing “incentives for energy production and conservation, to extend certain expiring provisions, to provide individual income tax relief, and for other purposes,” as the measure to promote new energy sources was officially described. The vote to take up that legislation was 50-44, or 10 “yes” votes fewer than necessary.
The votes were against a backdrop of $4-a-gallon gasoline and oil prices that have gone over $139 a barrel just at the start of the summer vacation season.
“I remember when gas was about a buck, 40 cents,” Senator Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat whose constituents often have to drive long distances, lamented before the votes.
Republican opponents of the oil-tax measure have argued that higher taxes on Big Oil would backfire, driving up gasoline prices and discouraging new domestic oil production and exploration. If the bill were approved, the American people “will get exactly what they don’t want,” said Senator Pete Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, who predicted higher prices and more reliance on imports.
As for the alternative-energy bill that was sidelined, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican minority leader, summed up the argument of most of his party colleagues by asserting that “those who think we can tax our way out of this problem” are wrong.
The White House said the United States was “paying a price today for decades of Democratic opposition and regulatory obstacles to increasing domestic oil production,” as President Bush’s spokesman Tony Fratto put it. “Instead of populist votes that would do nothing for gas prices, we need to allow domestic oil production in environmentally sensitive ways,” Mr. Fratto said, in an apparent allusion to the idea of exploring in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge..
Senate Democratic leaders were reportedly resigned to defeat on the oil-tax bill and did not ask Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, who just completed their months-long competition for the presidential nomination, to show up for the vote. The other four absentees were John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee for president; Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, and Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, Democrats who have been ill.
Six Republicans voted “yes” on the oil-tax bill. They were Norm Coleman of Minnesota, Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, John W. Warner of Virginia, Gordon Smith of Oregon and Susan M. Collins and Olympia J. Snowe, both of Maine. Only two Democrats voted “no,” Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Harry Reid of Nevada. Mr. Reid, the majority leader, may have voted “no” in a parliamentary move to preserve his right to bring up the proposal again.
In the House, meanwhile, Republicans pushed for consideration of a bill offered by Representative Mac Thornberry of Texas that Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican minority leader, said would offer real solutions to the country’s energy problems.
Mr. Boehner said the Thornberry bill “will open new American oil refineries, invest in alternative energy sources and increase environmentally safe exploration of untapped oil resources in the United States.” Mr. Boehner was apparently referring to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
“Where Democrats refuse to lead, Republicans will,” Mr. Boehner said, saying that Republicans would offer a series of petitions to try to force the Democratic House leadership to move on Republican proposals.
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