Environmentalists and renewable energy advocates say they are confident they can get to 60 votes. But here are a couple road blocks that they’ll have to avoid:

-Republicans likely won’t vote for a bill if Reid tries to attach other energy provisions to it.

-Liberal Democrats will likely pull their support if Republicans try to broaden the scope of the RES to include so-called clean coal or nuclear.

-Amendments: RES proponents are worried that a floor debate could get weighed down by Republican amendments.

Here’s a rundown some of the more interesting amendments:

• An amendment authored by Rep. Nick Rahall (D-Wa.), who also authored the CLEAR Act, a key component of the oil spill bill, would make a number of changes to the legislation. The amendment, among other things imposes civil penalties on CEOs who give false testimony about a companies ability to response to an oil spill; require that companies disclose the ingredients used in dispersants, rather than the chemical formula used; require oil companies to pay royalties on all oil that is spilled; and protects claimants from signing documents that would release a company from oil spill liability.
• An amendment authored by Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.) would require that offshore wind permitting would not be delayed in the new Bureau of Energy and Resource Management, which was created as a replacement for the Minerals Management Service.
• Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (D-N.H.) authored an amendment that would require that oil companies certify every year that they are using the best available technologies for the prevention of and response to oil spills.
• Reps. Harry Teague (D-N.M.) and Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) introduced an amendment that would allow oil companies to “pool” their insurance coverage in order to adequately protect against unlimited liability for spills.
• Reps. Charlie Melancon (D-La.) and Travis Childers (D-Miss.) introduced an amendment that would end the Obama administration’s moratorium on deepwater drilling.

Murkowski argued that Republicans were not given adequate time to review the bill before it was released and fixed on the limited opportunities Senators will have to offer amendments.

“We have instead been told that the Majority Leader is unlikely to allow amendments to be considered, and I can only imagine that’s because there are provisions tucked into this bill that he just doesn’t want to draw attention to, much less talk about and vote on,” Murkowski said.

The energy committee passed an oil spill response bill last month with bipartisan support, and Murkowski touted that bill in the speech. While the committee bill was largely included in the broad bill Reid put together, the new legislation includes a number of provisions from other committees as well.

Amendments that might get a vote today:

• Sen. Susan Collins’ (R-Maine) amendment to mandate minimum leverage and risk-based capital requirements for banks and other financial firms.
• Sen. Jeff Sessions’ (R-Ala.) amendment to provide an orderly and transparent bankruptcy process for financial firms.
• Sen. Arlen Specter’s (D-Pa.) amendment to allow private civil litigation against certain violators of Securities and Exchange Commission rules.
• Sen. Sam Brownback’s (R-Kans.) amendment to exclude automakers from the Consumer Financial Protection Agency’s oversight.
• Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Mark Pryor’s (D-Ark.) amendment to ensure small business fairness and regulatory transparency.
• Sen. Pat Leahy’s (D-Vt.) amendment to restore the application of the Federal antitrust laws to  health insurance companies.
• Sen. Dick Durbin’s (D-Ill.) amendment to ensure that the fees that small businesses and other entities are charged for accepting debit cards are reasonable.
• Sen. Al Franken’s (D-Minn.) amendment to impose new regulations on credit rating agencies.

Amendments that got a vote yesterday:

• Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Amy Klobuchar’s (D-Minn.) amendment ending liar loans and banning loan originators for making more money for selling riskier loans passed, 63-36.
• Sen. Bob Corker’s (R-Tenn.) amendment to study of the asset-backed securitization process and residential mortgage underwriting standards failed, 42-57.
• Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) and Klobuchar’s amendment to allow small banks and state-chartered banks to choose either the Federal Reserve or the Federal Deposit Insurance Co. as their regulator passed, 91-8.
• Sen. Saxby Chambliss’ (R-Ga.) amendment to implement regulatory oversight of the swap markets and to ensure that corporate end users are exempted from swaps laws failed, 39-59.
• Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Sen. Scott Brown’s (R-Mass.) amendment to establish a specific consumer protection liaison for members of the armed forces and their families passed, 98-1.
• Snowe and Sen. Mary Landrieu’s (D-La.) amendment to exclude small businesses from certain Consumer Financial Protection Agency measures passed by voice vote.
• Landrieu’s amendment to exempt qualified residential mortgages from credit risk retention requirements passed by unanimous consent.
• Sen. Mike Crapo’s (R-Idaho) amendment improving credit risk retention provisions passed by unanimous consent.

Now, on to the controversial amendments.

Up today: Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) amendment to authorize the Government Accountability Office to perform a more thorough audit of the Federal Reserve’s books — that is, Audit the Fed. But would auditing the Fed really do? And why is the Fed and the administration so afraid of it? Mike Konczal, the blogger also known as Rortybomb and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, speaks with The Center for Economic and Policy Research’s Dean Baker to find out. The whole post is worth a read, but here is a snippet:

The Fed has been giving two arguments against having the government audit their books to see who got what money under what terms, what the collateral was, etc. and making that information available.

Now with the audit — it’s up to Congress to decide whether to release the information to the public, so having the government audit it doesn’t mean it automatically becomes publicly available. It would be made available to the appropriate committees who would then make that decision. I personally would say it should be made public, but in any case the point would be to get a full accounting here so we can know what happened with the money.

The first argument the Fed is giving is that this would create a stigma for the banks. I’m kind of at a loss to understand what they even mean. They can give an argument that if you have a banking crisis and Bear [Stearns] is about to meltdown, and they suddenly need money from the Fed, and there’s this public statement saying that Bear went running to the Fed and borrowed $5 billion, that puts Bear in big trouble and a bank run could start.

But we’re talking about a year and a half, two years later [when the auditors might release that information]. So I don’t understand how that creates a crisis. Does that create a stigma, that the banks were in trouble? Well maybe, but I’m not sure why we should care. The Fed is not in the business of covering up banks’ bad financial shape. The principle we want is transparency. If they know a bank’s in trouble, again we don’t want to create a run, but after the fact the Fed should be making the banks’ condition more transparent, not helping them conceal it, as they did with Lehman for many months,.

So this stigma story I don’t quite understand. The other argument is this would hurt their independence. But again, I just don’t see any legitimate meaning of that term, independence, that it interferes with. We want them to make what they think are the best calls. But after the fact, do they have to answer for it? Should they have to say that these are the calls we made, this is why we made them? Absolutely.

I don’t understand how that isn’t independent. So those are the two arguments, on the one hand the stigma that will be created if at some point it’s known that banks go to the Fed, and on the other hand, that it somehow harms their independence. I mean, the FDA has to give a full account, we reviewed this drug, we reviewed that drug, this is why we approved this drug, here’s why we didn’t. I don’t understand why the Fed should operate differently.

The best amendment so far is a proposal from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) “prohibiting coverage of Viagra for child molesters and rapists.”

Why just Viagra, and not everything in the erectile-dysfunction family? Because he knows it won’t pass, and because Viagra would create a much better jingle than Sildenafil. You can already see the ads on the campaign trail: “Democrats voted to sustain the steady flow of Viagra to child molesters — with taxpayer dollars!”

More amendments after the jump:

• David Vitter (La.): To repeal the government takeover of health care. (#3553)
• Vitter: Prohibiting use of funds to fund the Associate of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). (#3554)
• Coburn: To require that each new bureaucrat added to any department or agency of the Federal Government for the purpose of implementing the provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act be offset by a reduction of 1 existing bureaucrat at such department or agency.  (#3557)
• Coburn: To help the President keep his promise that Americans who like the health care coverage they have now can keep it. (#3559)
• Coburn: To require all Members of Congress to read a bill prior to casting a vote on the bill. (#3566)
• Robert Bennett (Utah): To protect the democratic process and the right of the people of the District of Columbia to define marriage. (#3568)

Sens. John Ensign (R-Nev.) and David Vitter (R-La.) (WDCpix)

Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) ruffled feathers this month when he drafted a detailed strategy for stalling the health reform bill moving through the upper chamber. Yet Gregg is hardly alone, and health-care legislation is hardly the only target of the GOP’s delay tactics.

[Congress1]Since being swept from power in 2006, Republicans on Capitol Hill have persistently sought ways to slow the Democrats’ legislative agenda, erecting procedural hurdles and proposing contentious amendments to block even those bills supported by GOP leaders. The tactic has targeted legislation touching issues as varied as credit card reform, unemployment insurance and Indian health care. In some cases, Republicans have simply slowed the process; in others, they’ve killed legislation outright. In every instance, the strategy has highlighted the difficulties facing Democratic leaders as they try to make good on a wide range of legislative promises, mark a clean break from the policies of the Bush administration and retain their congressional majorities in elections to come.

In the latest episode, Gregg, the senior Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, issued a memo to his GOP colleagues last week urging them to lean on a host of procedural moves designed to slow the health-reform debate to a crawl.

“[I]t is critical that Republican senators have a solid understanding of the minority’s rights in the Senate,” Gregg wrote.

The memo incited a skirmish on Capitol Hill, with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) decrying the audacity of the Republicans, not only to delay legislation providing millions of Americans with health insurance, but to put their tactics in writing. Gregg responded Friday by referring to Reid’s incredulity as “pathetic.”

But if Gregg’s memo stirred a political storm, it’s likely only because (1) there’s so much at stake surrounding the overhaul of the nation’s health care system, and (2) the memo provided written proof of what the Democrats have been charging all along. Yet the stalling on health reform is just the latest in a long line of similar episodes portraying a much broader, if unmentioned, trend.

Poison Pills

The stalling strategy is one that spans Congresses. In 2007, for example, Democrats tried to pass legislation granting the District of Columbia a voting representative on Capitol Hill. Republicans attached an amendment that would have effectively stripped Washington’s strict gun-control laws, essentially killing the bill. In a rerun of that episode, the Senate this year passed a similar D.C.-vote bill, but not before Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) successfully attached a similar gun amendment. The move has left the bill to wallow in the House, where leaders remain opposed to the controversial rider. Meanwhile, the residents of D.C. continue to be without any real voice on federal policy issues.

In a similar case, the Senate last year passed legislation to provide a long-overdue increase in federal spending for the Indian Health Service, which hasn’t seen such a hike in more than a decade. Attached to the Senate bill, however, was a contentious amendment — sponsored by Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) — to permanently ban the use of federal dollars for abortion services for Native Americans. While a similar restriction applies to all populations, it’s not permanent. The distinction left many lawmakers and health-care advocates to wonder why Indians should be subject to health care restrictions not applicable to other ethnicities. Some called the amendment overtly racist. Whatever it’s label, the amendment caused the House to set the bill aside, and it hasn’t been considered since. Meanwhile, the Indian Health Service remains underfunded, and the health-care situation on the nation’s reservations remains a disaster.

There are other cases. The House, for example, moved to electronic filing of financial disclosure forms in 2001, but the Senate still hasn’t done so. The reason? Another Ensign amendment that would force groups that file complaints with the Senate Ethics Committee to disclose their donors — something many non-profits are opposed to doing. Meanwhile, upper-chamber lawmakers continue to file their financial disclosures forms on paper, a process that Brookings Institution scholar Thomas Mann has said “serve[s] no legitimate public or private interest.”

The Stalled Bills

On those bills opposed by Republicans, the stall tactics make sense. With only 40 members in the upper chamber, Republicans have leaned on procedural hurdles and poison-pill amendments to mount the opposition that their numbers can’t. Yet Republicans have also stalled a number of bills that they themselves support, if only to  prevent other proposals from reaching the floor. Through the entire month of October, for instance, Republicans held up a popular extension of unemployment benefits, bogging down the bill with amendments on ACORN and the Wall Street bailout — contentious provisions that also had the distinction of being completely unrelated to the underlying bill. (The Senate had already voted on similar ACORN amendments five times to that point in the year.)

“Unlimited debate. Unlimited amendment,” Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said amid the unemployment debate. “There’s no need for the United States Senate if we don’t have that. … This is the body that protects the minority view.”

Yet when the measure finally came to the floor, it passed 98 to 0 — a clear sign that the Republican’s goal was simply to prolong the debate to prevent the Democrats from considering their other legislative priorities. Meanwhile, an estimated 7,000 Americans were losing their jobless benefits each day, providing those unfortunate folks with a lesson in frustration as well as political science in the age of entrenched partisanship.

More recently, the Senate finally approved an emergency funding bill for disabled veterans. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) had stalled the bill for weeks, protesting that the $3.7 billion price tag wasn’t offset by spending cuts elsewhere in the government. Final passage came only after Democratic leaders agreed to stage a vote on Coburn’s amendment to transfer funds earmarked for the United Nations to pay for the health bill.  Though the Coburn amendment failed, the final vote on the underlying bill was 98 to 0, with Coburn supporting it.

In some cases, Democrats have decided to hold their noses and adopt the controversial amendments rather than allowing them to kill the larger bill. That strategy was on display earlier this year during the high-profile debate on credit card reform, when Coburn attached a provision ending a long-standing ban on concealed firearms in national parks. Obama signed that bill into law in May.

The string of delays has created a logjam of must-pass legislation in the upper-chamber, where the health-care debate is certain to monopolize most, if not all, of December. Left undone remains legislation to hike the debt limit, a nascent proposal tackling the nation’s employment crisis, and a handful of spending bills needed to keep the government running.

Indeed, Reid has already floated the possibility that Congress might be back in Washington between Christmas and New Years.

Researcher Hannah Dreier contributed to this report.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters Thursday morning that she hasn’t reached any conclusions. “We may not have any amendments,” she said. “That decision has not been made.”

She’s running out of time. Democratic leaders hope to stage the vote Saturday night.

The idea roused the interest of Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), who continued the improvised sketch before the empty chamber.

“I think it’s been a full two weeks since we’ve had an ACORN amendment on the floor,” Durbin said. “So clearly it’s time for us to move to one of the highest priorities many Republicans see in the nation. I wonder if we ought to consider more ACORN amendments in hopes of moving legislation.”

To be fair to Republicans, they insisted on an ACORN amendment as part of the unemployment bill for only a few weeks, dropping that demand more recently in favor of provisions to end the Wall Street bailout and fund the unemployment insurance extension using unspent stimulus money.

A cloture vote on the extension bill is scheduled for 12:15 p.m. today.

Ranking member Joe Barton (R-Texas), who promised to wage “sneaky,” “crafty” “guerrilla warfare” on the legislation, just delivered his opening statement. He said of the bill, “We know the cost is significant; we know the environmental benefit is practically nonexistent.”

And so he’s offering a Republican substitute bill, which he said “wouldn’t wreck the economy, would have some economic benefits and wouldn’t do any environmental harm.” If that language seems less than aggressive in combating global climate change, that’s because it is. Says Joe Romm, “You can’t really call it an alternative climate bill, since it doesn’t stop US greenhouse gas emissions from rising and the words “climate change” and “global warming” hardly appear in it at all — except to strip any authority from the EPA to address the problem.”

Barton also pledged to introduce a number of amendments to improve the legislation. In fact, he’s got 450 amendments up his sleeve, and I’ll give you a sense of their general thrust. Numbers 10 to 148 take this form:

• #30: “Suspends the act should more than 1,000 jobs in Indiana be lost due to the implementation of this Act.”
• #31: “Suspends the act should more than 2,000 jobs in Indiana be lost due to the implementation of this Act.”
• #32: “Suspends the act should more than 5,000 jobs in Indiana be lost due to the implementation of this Act.”
• #33: “Suspends the act should more than 10,000 jobs in Indiana be lost due to the implementation of this Act.”
• #34: “Suspends the act should more than 50,000 jobs in Indiana be lost due to the implementation of this Act.”

Swap in the names of 19 other states (no idea why the remaining 30 are excluded), and you get the general idea. You also start to understand Barton’s remark to Politico last week: “This is not going to be one of those gentlemanly, pro forma markups. We’re prepared for it to take weeks or months.”

OK, maybe it won’t be THAT fun to watch. Fortunately, TWI will provide updates and save you the trouble. Stay tuned.

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