Washington D.C., 10 March 2010

Obama hears ideas on climate bill from key senators the year at the one hour and 10 minute meeting, saying that it should offer companies incentives to shift towards cleaner energy production. “The president expressed his strong support for a bipartisan effort to establish clean energy incentives that will create jobs and reduce our dependence on foreign oil,” said a White House aide.

“And he made clear that the best way to drive a transition to a clean energy economy is to give business the predictability and certainty it needs to make investments.”

Obama heard from the three senators that are aiming to release a draft of a comprehensive energy and climate bill by around 26 March – right before spring recess.

Rapidly

Democrat John Kerry, Republican Lindsey Graham and Independent Joe Lieberman have been holding numerous meetings with individual senators over the past few weeks and said they are “moving rapidly”.

Graham indicated again after yesterday’s meeting that their legislation is unlikely to focus solely on energy, despite the fact that some fellow Republicans have called for an energy-only bill.

Senator Richard Lugar and Senator Lisa Murkowski, the top Republicans on the foreign relations and energy committees, respectively, urged that approach at the White House.

But Graham said that leaving the carbon capping component of a bill out of the legislative text is no guarantee of its easy passage in the Senate.

"There's not 60 votes doing energy only for offshore drilling. There's not 60 votes for nuclear power the way I would like. Only when you marry up climate change — cleaning up the air — with energy independence do you get" enough votes, he said.

The list of the 14 senators who attended varied slightly from the list that circulated yesterday.

In attendance

Senators in attendance included:
Democratic Senator Jeff Bingaman (energy committee chair)
Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer (environment committee chair)
Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown
Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell
Democratic Senator Susan Collins
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham
Republican Senator Judd Gregg
Democratic Senator John Kerry (foreign relations committee chair)
Republican Senator George LeMieux
Independent Senator Joe Lieberman
Republican Senator Richard Lugar (foreign relations committee ranking member)
Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski (energy committee ranking members)
Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller (commerce committee chair)
Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow

They joined the secretaries of the interior and agriculture, the EPA administrator, and special advisers to the president on energy and climate and economic policy.

Ends --