WASHINGTON — The first major energy legislation in a decade moved a few steps closer to becoming a law after House action this week, but Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski will still have to convince lawmakers to compromise on a host of provisions that have drawn veto threats from the White House.
Murkowski, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, ferried the bill through the Senate in a year-long effort to come up with a bipartisan offering that could straddle the large divide between the White House and the Republican majority in Congress on energy issues. It passed the Senate in April by a vote of 85-12.
But the U.S. House passed Murkowski's bill this week by a more partisan vote of 240 to 178. And lawmakers included a slew of amendments that had previously drawn veto threats from President Barack Obama.
The Senate will lead a conference committee to reconcile the two bills but procedural steps remain before the Senate selects conferees. It is fairly likely that Murkowski will score a key role on the conference committee.
And that will make two Alaskans.
On Thursday, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., announced the House's 24 Republican conferees, including Alaska Republican Don Young.
Young said he'll fight for a few of his own priorities when the conference committee gets going. That includes a bill introduced by Young that would make it easier to bypass Interior Department approval to drill on Native lands, and restrict the availability of information about environmental impact statements to individuals and entities, like tribes and state and local governments, who live in the "affected area."
Young said, "I hope Lisa will agree with me" on a provision that would strike down recent regulations governing game management in Alaska that were issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service. And Young touted a provision that aims to allow people to transport legally harvested ivory across state lines, as well as polar bear "trophies" captured in Canada. Young said he expects the polar bear measure will be "controversial" but he is still hopeful it will survive the final bill.
"I, frankly, think we can improve on the Senate bill," Young said, pointing to provisions in the House version that would provide firm deadlines for environmental review and smooth the way for pipelines and transmission lines across federal lands.
Provisions that have drawn veto threats included in the House-passed energy bill include language on western water resources that the White House said violates the Endangered Species Act, provisions to undercut climate change regulations, and mining provisions that the White House said would undercut federal environmental reviews.
Just how soon the two chambers will go to conference to try to hash out their differences remains unknown.
A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said his office is still working through plans and procedural steps for the conference with Senate Democrats.
"Chairman Murkowski is confident that we're going to get to conference and we're going to get a product coming out of conference that the president will sign," said her committee spokesman Michael Tadeo. Murkowski is "an eternal optimist" and "confident about the conference process," Tadeo said.
Young said he thought a conference would definitely happen this summer, but as for "the dark hole" Senate, "I don't know what they're doing over there."