Energy Efficiency

Floor Speech

Mr. REID. Mr. President, I commend the managers of the energy efficiency bill, Senator Wyden, chairman of the full committee, Senator Murkowski, the ranking member, and the sponsors of this legislation, Senators Shaheen and Portman, for their work in bringing this bill to the floor and managing it today.

We have had a number of Senators who have tried to offer amendments. I was told by Senator Shaheen that she had a dozen or so bipartisan amendments that were waiting to be offered. There has been an attempt to offer amendments dealing with the bill but there is a little hurdle here with something that is totally nongermane that has been offered.

One of the amendments Senator Udall of Colorado would like to offer is a bipartisan amendment to promote energy retrofitting of schools. Senator Bennet of Colorado seeks to offer a bipartisan amendment to facilitate best practices in commercial real estate energy efficiency. Senator Klobuchar would like to offer her amendment to promote energy retrofitting of nonprofit buildings. But once again, Mr. President, once again my Republican colleagues can't help themselves. They have objected to the consideration of any of these amendments or any other amendments until the Senate considers an amendment--and not only considers an amendment but is guaranteed a vote on it.

Pretty interesting situation. The Senator's amendment is, of course, and everyone knows it, only for looks. It is a ``gotcha'' amendment. The Senator's amendment is the sort of amendment that is to help get some headlines in newspapers or some kind of news story. We recognize it is for show. But be that as it may, we will work with managers to craft a way forward on this bill, perhaps, or we may have to take the bill down. But we will make that decision at a subsequent time.

It is unfortunate, but that is the political world we live in now with the tea-party-driven House of Representatives. And by the way--of course everyone knows by now--they couldn't pass their continuing resolution today, so that is off the table. They were going to do that not today but tomorrow, and they pulled that down. Then we have our folks over here trying to just outmatch what they do over there so we wind up getting nothing done. Such a shame.

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