Senate Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-NM, has decided to separate two key pieces of the stalled comprehensive energy bill and attempt to attach them to other legislation to ensure that energy production tax incentives and transmission grid reliability measures become law.

Though Democrats had pushed for such a move to pass smaller, crucial pieces of the energy bill, they blocked the corporate tax cut bill that carried the energy incentives provisions. Amendment issues, not the energy bill rider, were the obstacle.

Domenici sees the energy tax measures as a natural fit with the corporate tax bill, saying both are jobs bills that can boost the US economy. He says the energy provisions add another 650,000 new jobs over the next decade.

The $13 billion energy tax package is needed to spur new transmission investment, fund the Alaska natural gas pipeline, expand wind energy production and "an array of other steps critical to diversifying our energy supply," Domenici said. The second piece of the energy bill to be spun off will "enforce electricity reliability standards, mandate the use of more ethanol, provide the loan guarantees for the pipeline, repeal PUHCA, encourage clean coal and accomplish a similarly long list of tasks important to increased energy production."

The senator was optimistic, though not specific, about how the Senate would reconcile differences with the comprehensive energy bill passed by the House. "We’ll work them out," he said.

Ironically, Domenici’s move comes the same week a poll by The Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth shows that 96 percent of Americans support a comprehensive energy policy for the nation.

Copyright 2004. Scudder Publishing Group. Published weekly.