No Deal on Energy Bill, Monday Vote Canceled

[Spazito]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican negotiators have canceled Monday's vote on a broad U.S. energy bill after failing over the weekend to finalize a $16 billion package of tax credits and incentives in the legislation, congressional sources said on Sunday.



Republican staff were in their Capitol Hill offices over the weekend trying to resolve the multibillion-dollar tax provisions in the energy bill, but could not reach a deal in time to have a final vote on the legislation on Monday before a joint Senate-House conference committee.


"No conference tomorrow ... We're on hold," said one congressional aide familiar with the talks.

Going into the weekend talks there was disagreement among negotiators, in particular, over the tax package's incentives to build an Alaskan natural gas pipeline and provide a fuel tax break for ethanol-blended gasoline, the congressional sources said.

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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=615&e=18&u=/nm/energy_congress_dc

[Vikingking66]

1. interesting....

hmmm....screwup?

[madfloridian]

2. Hundreds of pages the Democrats have not seen.

"The aide said there are "hundreds and hundreds of pages" in the bill that Democrats have not seen yet."

That is just plain scary. Wonder if the eminent domain clause for power companies is in there still?

[acmavm]

3. I cannot imagine that it is legal (let alone constitutional) for the

repukes to not let the democrats read the entire bill. How does this happen to be possible? Yes, they need to fillibuster this bill. It needs to go to the courts. We were guaranteed an open government, but this is something straight out of the old Soviet Union.