The payroll tax cut bill that Congress approved today contained no big energy-related provisions even though each party had fought to include them in a compromise.
On a bipartisan votes, the House and Senate approved the package that extends the payroll tax cut through the end of the year as well as provides continued unemployment benefits.
Republicans had long considered inserting language to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. Also up for consideration: a GOP provision to delay Environmental Protection Agency toxic-emission standards for industrial and commercial boilers and a proposal by Democrats to extend clean-energy tax credits, including one that provides a per-kilowatt-hour discount for new wind farms the first 10 years they’re online.
At the end of the day, the absence of Keystone XL and the boiler rule delay appeared to be a painful but necessary pill for Republicans to swallow, as was the absence of clean-energy tax credits for Democrats.
“I think there are a lot of people disappointed in this whole package and a lot of people support this package, but as you know in the legislative process it’s impossible to win everything,” said Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Energy and Power Subcommittee.
The Republican-controlled House passed a bill extending the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits last fall, but it never got to the president’s desk. That bill included language delaying the limits on toxic emissions from boilers as well as a provision to speed up a decision of the tar-sands oil pipeline from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries.
But in the final deal on the bill that passed today, those provisions were dropped.
“The Republicans knew they couldn’t hold on to them,” said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “They’re trying to put them on other bills, but I think we’re going to have to fight them every step of the way.”
At the same time Waxman said he was disappointed that the payroll tax cut deal didn’t include extensions of clean-energy tax credits.
The wind-power industry has lobbied to get its production tax credit extended beyond the end of 2012, claiming the lapse of the credit would cost between 30,000 and 40,000 jobs and bring the industry to a halt. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has said the wind credit’s expiration would serve as a “killer” for the industry.
But Whitfield said he doesn’t see any inclination in the House for having those clean-energy credits extended.
“They always exaggerate,” he said of the concerns the wind industry raised.
