Thomas Daschle: “I, too, wish to have an opportunity to comment briefly on the vote we have just taken. Mr. President, for Senators like…”

“I, too, wish to have an opportunity to comment briefly on the vote we have just taken. Mr. President, for Senators like me, who support enactment of a comprehensive energy bill, the Senate's failure this morning to break this filibuster was as unnecessary as it is unfortunate. It is a classic example of insisting on provisions that were simply too much for the traffic to bear. The Senate's lead negotiator, Senator Domenici, was, I believe, prepared to work in good faith with his House counterparts to craft a comprehensive energy bill that could attract broad bipartisan support in this body. Regrettably, his best intentions were undercut by the cynical manipulations of the House Republican leadership during the conference proceedings, which cut Senator Bingaman out of the conference process and produced a product that was a far cry from the bipartisan energy bill that passed the Senate in July. I am convinced that a true conference would have produced a much more balanced energy bill than that before us today. Make no mistake, however, the overriding reason for the failure of this bill today was not what I consider to be its disturbing lack of balance between production and conservation or between promotion of fossil fuels and renewable energy sources. It was the House Republican leadership's insistence on inclusion of retroactive liability protections for MTBE shielding MTBE producers from legal exposure.”