“The energy bill is much further down the road…. Common sense dictates that if you have a bill that’s ready to go, that’s the one I’m going to go to,” Reid told reporters at his weekly press conference this afternoon, according to Kate Shepard at Mother Jones Network.
Reid had already signaled this reminder of how the Senate prioritizes legislation to the media over the weekend. He laid it out even more unequivocally today.
“The energy bill is ready and we’ll move that more quickly than the bill we don’t have. I don’t have an immigration bill,” he said.
Indeed, the energy bill is moving along, albeit out of sight. Yesterday’s long-planned expected press conference detailing what is in it was canceled when Senator Graham got wind of the idea that additional legislation was also in the pipeline, and issued a spate of press releases threatening to bail. But that may have been just for show.
In fact, yesterday afternoon, despite having no press conference to unveil it, Senators Graham, Kerry and Lieberman did in fact send their bill to the EPA for their economic analysis, despite the supposed balking by one of the three.
Sending the bill on the rounds to the agencies with an interest in it would have been the next step anyway. My hunch is that Senator Graham is not going to back down now. He has been a good-faith negotiator with Democrats so far on the climate and energy bill.
Image: Ralph Alswang
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