The House last night continued its effort to keep the Obama administration in the dark when it comes to enforcing landmark rules requiring light bulbs to be more efficient.

Lawmakers added to a pending appropriations bill an amendment that would prevent the Department of Energy from spending any money to ensure manufacturers are in line with the requirements, extending an enforcement ban imposed early this year, when the standards from the 2007 energy bill first went into effect. The light bulb rider, sponsored by Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas), passed on a voice vote last night during a marathon debate on the fiscal 2013 energy and water development spending bill.

Debate on remaining amendments continues today, with roll call votes on several pending amendments and the underlying $32.1 billion bill scheduled to begin this afternoon.

While the ban was included in the final version of the fiscal 2012 appropriations bill that President Obama signed into law, suggestions that it should continue have encountered harsher resistance this time around from Democrats. Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), who chairs the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said a one-year prohibition was not all that worrisome because manufacturers already had geared up to meet the rule, but that continuing to prevent enforcement of the tightening standards would be a mistake (E&E Daily, May 8).

The debate over the House spending bill this week is something of an academic exercise, as the bill in its current form is not expected to survive the Senate and already has attracted a veto threat from the White House (E&E Daily, June 1).

Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, said the debate was an opportunity for lawmakers to "put out their press releases" but that the real work on determining how to fund the government would be resolved through House-Senate negotiations. In an interview yesterday, Dicks predicted Congress would pass a "continuing resolution" to keep the government running past the Oct. 1 start of fiscal 2013 and that full-year funding would be wrapped up in a post-election omnibus appropriations package.

Burgess said he has still been hearing from constituents angry about the lighting standards, which Republicans have dubbed a "ban" on the incandescent light bulb, and that he wants to see DOE continue to be barred from enforcing them. At the same time, he acknowledged his rider was not the top determinant of how he would vote on a final package.

"Is it a make-or-break for me? I can't say honestly that it is," he told E&E Daily in a brief interview yesterday. "But it's important to me."

Fossil, nuclear offices survive effort to gut funding

Earlier in the day, the House beat back a conservative-led effort -- which attracted some Democratic support -- to eliminate funding for the Department of Energy's fossil fuel office and gut its nuclear office.

The House also defeated an effort to boost funding for high-risk, high-reward clean energy research as debate stretched late into the evening on the $32.1 billion spending bill to fund the Department of Energy, the Army Corps of Engineers and other agencies.

Prior to yesterday's votes, the House adopted a unanimous consent agreement limiting debate on the bill to about 50 additional amendments in addition to the two dozen or so brought to the floor over the first two days of debate (E&ENews PM, June 5).

Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) continued his wholesale assault on DOE funding, offering amendments yesterday that would eliminate all $554 million set aside for DOE's Office of Fossil Energy and $514 million of $765 million from its Nuclear Energy account. The amendments follow a failed attempt by the California Republican last week to eliminate DOE's efficiency and renewable energy programs (E&ENews PM, June 1).

The conservative Heritage Foundation's political arm, Heritage Action for America, distributed a "key vote alert" yesterday urging support for McClintock's fossil fuel amendment, a step it did not take regarding the nuclear and renewable amendments.

"While those amendments are worthy of support, Heritage Action believes the OFE amendment is not only the most revealing, but also empowers lawmakers to rebut political charges of being 'shills' for 'Big Oil,'" the conservative group said.

Both amendments attracted a handful of Democrats and split Republicans. The fossil office amendment failed on a 138-249 vote, with 36 Democrats voting for it and 123 Republicans against; the nuclear office amendment went down 186-281, with 15 Democrats in favor and 134 Republicans against.

The House yesterday also rejected a Democratic amendment seeking to boost funding for DOE's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), which funds high-risk research that could produce breakthroughs in clean energy development. Rep. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) offered the amendment to add $133 million to ARPA-E's budget by reducing the fossil fuel office by the same amount. The amendment failed 131-237.

Rep. Jim Matheson (D-Utah) failed in his attempt to adjust spending to assist in the cleanup of nondefense nuclear sites. His amendment would have moved $9.6 million from the National Nuclear Security Administration's construction account to boost the cleanup fund. During floor debate, Matheson pointed to the ongoing cleanup project to remove 16 million tons of uranium tailings from the banks of the Colorado River in Moab, Utah, which is in his district, as an example of the types of projects that need additional funding. The amendment failed 152-235.

During the evening session, several other amendments passed by voice vote. They included one from Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) to require light-duty federal fleet vehicles to comply with an executive order that new vehicle purchases run on alternative fuels by 2015, one from Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) preventing funding of any international energy programs aside from cooperation with Israel and one from Rep. Jeff Landry (R-La.) to defund a DOE media campaign to promote clean energy and efficiency.

Rep. Bill Flores (R-Texas) also succeeded in attaching an amendment to the bill that would prohibit enforcement of a 2007 energy law provision requiring federal agencies to only purchase synthetic fuels whose life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions are lower than those from conventional petroleum fuels. The amendment passed by voice vote, and Flores said it was aimed not at preventing development of renewable fuels but at ensuring that agencies such as the Defense Department have the ability to pursue all fuel sources, such as liquefied coal.

Remaining amendments

Several additional amendments were debated on the floor yesterday afternoon and evening, including measures to boost spending to revive the Yucca Mountain, Nev., nuclear storage site, eliminate government funding for oil shale research and eliminate funds for a controversial uranium-enrichment facility. Votes on those measures were delayed until today.

A popular target for amendments was DOE's controversial loan guarantee program. Members from both sides of the aisle offered measures aimed at defunding it, with most pointing to the support for now-bankrupt solar manufacturer Solyndra as a key reason to eliminate the program (see related story).

Continuing its confrontation with the Obama administration over Yucca Mountain, the House appears likely to adopt today an amendment from Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) that would give the Nuclear Regulatory Commission an additional $10 million to complete the evaluation of the Yucca license application (E&ENews PM, June 1). The amendment won broad support from Democratic and Republican committee leaders during yesterday afternoon's floor debate, although the provision -- along with language in the underlying bill supportive of Yucca -- is likely to prove contentious in the Senate.

Democratic Reps. Gerry Connolly of Virginia and Jared Polis of Colorado also demanded a vote on their amendment aimed at stripping funding for oil shale research, although that measure is expected to fail, as did an earlier effort to block government support for the unproven resource extraction technique (E&E Daily, June 5).

Yesterday's debate also saw the rare pairing of Reps. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Burgess on efforts to strip funding for uranium enrichment, despite their disagreement on the light bulb rider. The two co-sponsored an amendment to strip $100 million from the U.S. Enrichment Corp.'s ongoing research at its American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, Ohio. The amendment is scheduled to come to a vote today, although it is unlikely to fare better than an earlier effort to strip government support from the plant (Greenwire, May 18).

Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), another USEC critic, also offered an amendment taking a different approach to preventing the government from supporting the company. Her measure would prevent DOE from transferring more than 1,917 metric tons of uranium to the market. It is expected to come to a vote today.

Lummis acknowledged that the amendment is "politically sticky" because of support among Midwestern lawmakers to keep USEC's operations in Ohio and Kentucky going, but she said any jobs that would be saved there would be offset by job losses among Western uranium miners because DOE's "dumping" of uranium depresses the market. She emphasized that the amendment "does not halt work at any of USEC's failing sites," does not halt national security transfers and allows cleanup of sites in Ohio to continue.

"The bottom line is this: We do not need to sacrifice jobs in Wyoming or Illinois to support jobs in Kentucky -- that is a false choice. We can do both, and that is exactly what my amendment does."

Water amendments

An amendment by Rep. Jeff Landry (R-La.) would prevent the Army Corps from using any money in the bill to implement or enforce a more stringent type of wetlands mitigation methodology known as the "Modified Charleston Method."

The new mitigation requirements were implemented by the Army Corps in Louisiana to stem the ecologically disastrous erosion of wetlands in the region, which loses an estimated football field's worth every 38 minutes. Landry said the method has driven up the cost of wetlands mitigation, effectively halting levee and land development projects.

"This method has driven up the state and local mitigation costs of hurricane protection in Louisiana by 300 percent," he said.

His amendment would halt the method's use in Louisiana for one year. Despite objections from Rep. Pete Visclosky (D-Ind.), who defended the method and said its suspension would disrupt wetland banking efforts and would delay projects now under way, the amendment passed by voice vote.

Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-Minn.) offered an amendment that would prevent any money from being used to develop or submit proposals to expand authorized uses of the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund. The amendment passed on a voice vote.

Every year, Congress spends only about half of what the trust fund collects annually in ad valorem taxes on imported goods, usually around $750 million. The rest has been allowed to accumulate so as to offset deficit spending elsewhere.

As part of the ongoing debate over the transportation bill, lawmakers are seeking to force Congress to spend the full amount on its intended purpose: maintaining harbors, which lawmakers in port districts say are in need of overdue maintenance to ensure the nation's economic competitiveness.

By potentially preventing any expansion of the definition of what the fund could pay for, Cravaack's amendment aims to ensure that money goes solely toward harbor dredging and maintenance, as currently defined.

Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.) won approval by voice vote for an amendment that would reduce funding for the Missouri River Recovery Program, the federal environmental restoration effort along the river, from $71 million to $50 million.

Graves called spending on restoration unacceptable given the shortage of dollars available to build and rebuild levees.