ABSTRACT
In the spring of 2003, with Republicans in control of both the House and Senate, Congress began to consider highly contentious legislation to overhaul U.S. energy policy.2 With the weight of the Republican White House behind them, Republican proposals in both chambers included wide ranging tax subsidies for energy producers and aimed to overhaul electricity laws to encourage private investment in energy infrastructure such as power plants and transmission lines. The House acted swiftly in adopting a bill based largely on recommendations from an energy task force led by Vice President Dick Cheney, but similar proposals met strong resistance from Senate Democrats. For several months, the bill languished on the floor, with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist unable to get the sixty votes needed to end debate and move to a final vote. Finally, a breakthrough came when Minority Leader Tom Daschle suggested that they could simply replace the full language of the current bill with that of the Democratic-sponsored energy bill that had passed the Senate during the previous year (but never became law). Frist agreed, and the bill quickly and overwhelmingly passed the Senate.
