[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Page 13410]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           ENERGY EFFICIENCY

  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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