[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 72 (Wednesday, June 5, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5031-S5032]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ENERGY BILL CONFERENCE

  Mr. BINGAMAN. Madam President, about 2 weeks ago I urged that the 
House leadership go ahead and appoint conferees for the energy bill on 
which we should be in conference at this point.
  As Senators will remember, we passed the energy bill in the Senate on 
April 25. The respective leaders of the two parties appointed conferees 
on May 1. Since then, we have not seen any action on the House side to 
appoint conferees so we could begin a conference with the House of 
Representatives on this very important bill.
  The House bill is in excess of 500 pages. The bill we passed in the 
Senate after 6 weeks of floor debate is nearly 1,000 pages in length. 
It will take several weeks to come to agreement on a joint proposal we 
can take back to the two Houses and, hopefully, to the President.
  The sooner we can get started, the better for everyone's point of 
view. It is in the country's interests that we try to resolve the 
differences between the House and the Senate and try to enact an energy 
bill this year. As long as we do not have conferees named on the House 
side, that makes it extremely difficult. I, again, urge the leadership 
on the House side to appoint their conferees.
  When I raised this issue last month, one of my colleagues announced 
he had heard that the House of Representatives was going to appoint its 
conferees on the first day back after the recess. Well, that would have 
been yesterday, and we still don't have any forward

[[Page S5032]]

motion. I am getting ready to borrow Senator Lott's bloodhounds to go 
looking for the House conferees.
  We have an immense undertaking before us in terms of getting a 
balanced and comprehensive energy bill to the President's desk. The 
House bill is over 500 pages and the Senate bill is nearly 1000 pages. 
There are some similarities between the bills, but some very important 
differences, as well.
  Conferences on authorizing legislation are never easy. The 
bioterrorism bill, for example, took months to conference. The 
bankruptcy bill has been in conference for over a year. To have a 
successful conference on the energy bill will take a lot of careful 
planning on the part of the leadership on both sides in both Houses of 
Congress. As I mentioned before the recess, even the most elementary 
questions, such as who should chair the conference, seem to be in 
dispute, although I think that the precedents are clearly in the 
Senate's favor.
  We need to get going, and the actual naming of conferees by the House 
of Representatives, whenever it happens, will only be a start to a 
process of figuring out how the conference will be structured, whether 
there will be subconferences, and which issues to address first. I am 
anxious to start to work with whomever the House of Representatives 
decides will be my counterpart to initiate the organizational 
discussions.
  To be most effective with the use of our time, we may have to think 
about taking on the big issues first to see if there is an overall 
energy bill that can achieve a critical mass of support on both sides 
of both House and Senate. If we adopt an incremental approach of 
working on minor issues first, and leaving all the hard issues to the 
end, we may be still working on clearing the legislative underbrush in 
December.
  I hope that we can see some progress soon on starting the energy 
conference.

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