Director of Government Relations :: Larry Hart
The deal cooked up by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the two Republican Senators from Maine, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, to get a badly need win for the Democrats, not surprisingly turned out to involve money for Maine. Each time this $36 billion bill has been brought up there have been different funds to partially offset the cost. One part of it would have meant less money for Bath Iron Works, a sacred cow of funding in Maine since the days of Senator Bill Cohen, a Republican who became bill Clinton’s Defense Secretary. So that was scrapped and Reid was able to convince House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to call the House into special session next week to pass the new version of the bill, another demand by Snowe.
Now Reid is taking grief from the powerful renewable energy lobby for stealing $1.5 billion from the bloated renewable energy loan program set up in the stimulus to help offset the state bailout. The solar energy industry has packed a powerful political punch with Republicans and Democrats in western states, including Reid’s Nevada, and they are furious with Reid for not including a mandate to purchase renewable energy in his energy bill. So Reid now says he will find a way to “restore” the funds to the program, which is also missing $2 billion used for the absurd “Cash for Clunkers” program. Reid has a point on this one, since most of the $20 billion in the program has never been given out, due to bureaucratic ineptness and the odd requirement of the program that the Treasury Department share responsibility. Treasury, of course, had no one in the Department with knowledge on these issues.
Nevertheless, the state bailout bill is a big win for the Democrats who had failed for weeks to get a vote on their “jobs” agenda. Most of the money will go to big urban states such as New York, New Jersey and California where the state employee unions are strong.
www.conservative.org
