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Senate Passes Bipartisan Energy Bill To Develop New Technologies, Improve Cybersecurity (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Washington Post: The U.S. Senate acted in a bipartisan fashion to pass a sweeping energy bill, touching on everything from cybersecurity for power plants to the future of the grid. The bill resulted from collaboration between Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Washington Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell. The bill, if it merges with House legislation and becomes law, would unleash billions in research and development on new energy technologies, including energy storage, hydrokinetic and marine energy and advancing the electric grid. Many of these initiatives have substantial aisle-crossing appeal, and some could, at least indirectly, help address the problem of climate change. The bill also reauthorizes the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and contains provisions promoting more research on the sequestering of carbon emissions from coal burning and hastening the approval of pipelines and liquefied natural gas exports. The bill, said Alliance to Save Energy president Kateri Callahan, "not only saves homeowners and businesses money and creates jobs, but it also has a huge environmental return by avoiding 1.5 billion tons of carbon emissions. Energy efficiency truly is a win-win-win for our country, making our economy more energy productive, protecting our environment and enhancing our energy security."
US Senate passes bill creating a slush fund for campaign contributors.
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How can a *bi-partisan* bill get passed? Seems impossible given recent descriptions of Congress.
OTOH, it seems that bi-partisan bills are often pork barrels and little else.
Rather than a real compromise that tries to incorporate and balance the best ideas of both sides, these sorts of bills seem to just have equal parts of bad ideas with enough funding that almost all players "get something".
Taxpayers get something too, but it's the pointy end of the stick.