Hi John,

Good to see you posting! I spoke just now with Mary Frances Repko in the Majority Leader's office (my Congressman Hoyer) and it looks as though HR 6049 may be brought up again in the Senate. EandE daily is the source she cited though it needs a subscription. http://www.eenews.net/eed/

The difficulty is, as you point out, having the incentives as revenue neutral or not. HR 5985 and 197 do not include tax increases that cover the cost of the incentives. HR 6049 does. However, it does not take the taxes out of the energy but rather finance industry I think, and, according the Mary Frances, closing loopholes that the taxed industry agrees need to be closed.

In any case, the Majority Leader would be supportive of the five year extention concept in the Pomeroy Bill but they are working on getting a formula that works in the Senate. Apparently, paying for these incentive by closing incentives for oil companies is not going to fly. But, if we do something sensible like institute gas rationing to bring down prices, the oil companies won't have the profits to tax in any case so I don't see a reason to balance against their incentives.

In terms of revenue, it seems to me that the renewable incentives will ultimately be revenue positive no matter how the current accounting is done since there will be taxes coming in once they expire on a much larger industry than would exist at that point otherwise. I suppose that sounds a bit supply-side but energy is an arena where those arguments actually have some merit.

Chris

A little more info: The failure of HR 6049 in the Senate was on a vote to end (or limit) debate, I think to 30 hours. It can be brought up as regular business and debated (and ammended) over a longer period. Here is another recent article: http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewarticle+articleid_2279578~zonei...

There is some he-said-she-said in this article: http://www.nationaljournal.com/congressdaily/cda_20080611_9311.php

I would say that the best place to put some pressure is on McCain who can agree with Grassley that the conditions don't make sense but at the same time vote for some tax increases that do make sense. That way he can come across as pragmatic and ready for the general. It is uncertain how much strength McCain has in his own party yet, but his party is pretty good at unity so if he attempts to lead, there may be enough who will go along. So far, on these issues, he has been ducking votes. Letting him know that we need action and not just words might do the job.

Chris