WAIT'LL THE MAJORITY IS FILIBUSTER-PROOF:

Energy bill with $23B in tax breaks OK'd (AP, 11/17/03)

House and Senate conferees approved late Monday a massive energy bill that includes $23 billion in tax incentives, clearing the way for the legislation's final congressional approval, probably this week.

The House could take up the measure, a top priority for President Bush, as early as Tuesday.

The conferees rejected dozens of amendments, most of them brought by Democrats, as they left the Republican-crafted bill — the product of weeks of closed-door negotiations — largely intact.

House negotiators passed it by voice vote, followed by approval from the Senate side by a vote of 8-5. The seven GOP senators were joined by Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., in support of the bill.

For those of you keeping score at home, this means that if the Medicare reform bill passes too, President Bush will have enacted every major piece of legislation he proposed in campaign 2000, except for Social Security privatization, which Lindsey Graham will reintroduce in the Senate today and the President will campaign on in '04. All this despite first a one seat margin in the Senate, then a minority, then a two seat majority. Perhaps no other administration has achieved more with less control of Congress.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 18, 2003 8:17 AM