Faced with crumbling support for their energy-infrastructure package, House Republicans will split the bill into three sections that they believe will have a better chance of passing independently.

According to a Rules Committee schedule released this morning and a subsequent news release, the House will consider H.R. 7 as three separate packages: one focusing on transportation, one on energy production that will include language on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline and the third dealing with federal pensions. The three would then be combined after passage and sent to the Senate for a conference.

"Republicans pledged to pass bills in a more transparent manner and reverse the era of quickly moving massive bills across the floor without proper examination," said House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Rules Chairman Dave Dreier (R-Calif.) in a statement.

"Accordingly, the energy/infrastructure jobs plan will be considered on the floor in the same manner in which it was written and voted upon in committee -- in separate pieces, allowing each major component of the plan to be debated and amended more openly, rather than as a single 'comprehensive' bill with limited debate and limited opportunity for amendment."

The Rules Committee is meeting tonight to consider the procedure for debating the bill and which of the nearly 300 proposed amendments will see floor time. The committee tonight will hear only from the chairmen and ranking members of relevant committees and members offering amendments to the pension and energy language. The committee will reconvene tomorrow for more work on the transportation section.

The maneuver is expected to gather more votes for the individual sections, offering a lifeline for the package that had seen a loss of moderate Republicans on the energy production side and conservatives for the transportation spending package. The move could also bring in urban Republicans who had fled the package because of language that would strip the mass transit account of its dedicated gas tax funding.

The energy package (H.R. 3408) -- which includes an expansion of oil shale exploration, new offshore leasing and an expansion of drilling in Alaska -- could lose support from moderate Republicans, particularly on the language concerning the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Last week, six moderate Republicans told Boehner they opposed the language, and Rep. Jim Gerlach (R-Pa.), who represents a suburban Philadelphia district, has offered up an amendment stripping the language (E&E Daily, Feb. 14).

However, the language could pick up the support of a handful of Democrats, including Reps. Jim Costa (D-Calif.) and Dan Boren (D-Okla.), pushing it nearer to passage.

The transportation language could pose a greater challenge, with some conservatives coming out against the bill's excess spending above the receipts from the federal gas tax. Democrats have come out firmly against the language, which would overhaul environmental reviews and strip funding for bike paths, pedestrian trails and rail.

However, the package is also expected to create construction and transportation jobs, which could bring more Republicans on board. A stakeholder from a group pushing for a transportation bill said that piece had a good shot at passage, because leaders "want to give Republicans something they can talk about when they get home."

The third piece, which would include a bill to save about $42 billion through an overhaul of the federal retirement system to offset some of the transportation bill's cost, has some support in the House. Most Republicans support restructuring a federal retirement system they consider too generous, and not all Democrats are dead-set against it -- though there is more debate over what the savings should go toward. President Obama has twice recommended increases to employee contributions to pay down the deficit, most recently in the budget he released yesterday, which would raise the amount an employee pays to 2 percent of salary (Greenwire, Feb. 13).

However, Obama's changes are far less harsh than those laid out in H.R. 3813. The bill -- which passed the Oversight and Government Reform Committee last week on a party-line vote -- would increase most federal employee contributions from 0.8 percent of salary to 2.3 percent. It would also change the formula for annuities, meaning employees would pay more for pensions worth less.

The bill could get held up over a controversial transit funding change that would move the mass transit account out of the Highway Trust Fund and open it up to the appropriations process. Urban Republicans and Democrats alike have come out against that move, saying it would jeopardize the long-term future of transit and could lead to cost-cutting. Several amendments filed with the Rules Committee dealt with that section, which has emerged as a major sticking point.

Ultimately, bill supporters say the new move could end up helping the transportation package, especially if the goal is to just get it to conference with the Senate, which has proposed a much shorter, but less costly, transportation bill.

"How the floor gets things to conference is not our concern," said Alex Herrgott, director of congressional and public affairs for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "It's the outcome, not the mechanism. We're concerned with getting a House bill to conference that maintains current spending levels."

Port and harbor maintenance

Several amendments filed to the House Rules Committee would try to force Congress to direct the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to spend about $1.5 billion annually -- double what it currently does -- on port and harbor maintenance.

The provision is opposed by some appropriators and Rules Committee leaders who see the parliamentary procedure that the bill calls for as a end-run around the appropriations process and the rules of the chamber. The amendments stand ready as negotiations for a compromise solution continue behind the scenes between leadership, appropriators, rules committee leaders and other stakeholders.

Rep. Charles Boustany (R-La.) filed some of the amendments, minor variations on the bill he introduced last year, which has since amassed 174 bipartisan co-sponsors but failed to win key support of ruleskeepers and appropriators.

"We're going to be talking to him throughout the day to see what the most effective one is," said Herrgott. "There's no elegant way to force the appropriations committee to spend $1.5 billion and to not cannibalize the other business lines of the corps."

The Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund collects about $1.5 billion annually in ad valorem taxes on goods imported through ports and harbors. In a recurring exercise in budgetary gimmickry, only about half that amount gets spent on dredging and other harbor maintenance needs. The rest has been used to offset spending in other areas of the budget for more than a decade.

The so-called RAMP Act (H.R. 104) -- for Realizing America's Maritime Promise -- would create a new parliamentary procedure allowing any member to halt an appropriations bill that fails to spend the full amount on harbors.

Much of the concern centers on the key question of where the extra spending on harbors would come from. Spending caps established in last year's debt-limit showdown between Congress and the White House have rendered the competition for funds in the Energy and Water Appropriations bill, which funds the corps and the Department of Energy, a zero-sum game.

Herrgott said the Chamber does not rank any one of the Army Corps' three main priorities -- navigation, flood control and ecosystem restoration -- as more important than the others. But he said the money may not necessarily have to come from the Energy and Water bill. "We prioritize the other business lines of the corps as equally important," he said.

Reporters Emily Yehle and Phil Taylor contributed.