Progress Report on Congress Ban Repeal Efforts

(Updated during the day)

As posted before,
action on repealing the coming US federal ban on regular 100W incandescent bulbs has stalled in the Democrat-controlled Senate Energy Committee:
From the anti-Republican NRDC blog post by Scott Slesinger, 17th November, the day after the relevant HR 2354 bill was up for consideration:

"The Senate has set aside work on a spending bill for energy and water programs for now, but earlier this week the possibility that it could come up prompted Senate Republicans to offer a cornucopia of counter-productive ideas....
(the) bill was shelved, at least temporarily"

Included among the amendments,
just in case the bill was actually going to be considered, was
Amendment No. 988
by Senators Enzi (R-WY), DeMint (R-SC), Paul (R-KY) and Johanns (R-NE),
the text of which apparently had no time to be filed,
(it is supposedly also in the linked Congressional Record as S7573, but not listed there)
which I understand essentially repeats the Michael Burgess House amendment
to cut funding for oversight of the 2012 100 Watt incandescent light bulb ban.

As reported earlier, it seems the original Burgess House amendment of the Bill was not going to be considered anyway as part of the Bill by the Senate Committee...so the new amendment was perhaps more for the record.



A Daily Caller article by Caroline May from the 6th of December, confirms the overall stalling of the bill, with further information, extracts:

According to spokesman Daniel Head, Enzi has filed an amendment to the Energy and Water Appropriations bill to delay implementation of the incandescent phase-out.

Head noted, however, that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced Tuesday that the Energy and Water bill would likely not be considered by the Senate.

According to spokesman Sean Brown [spokesman for Rep. Joe Barton, behind an earlier specific bulb ban repeal bill], Barton plans to work on passing legislation that would permanently overturn the ban during the second session of Congress.

Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told The Daily Caller that there remain avenues for Republicans to stop the phase-out, including attaching language to the payroll tax cut bill or an omnibus bill.

“There are at least two vehicles here at the end of the year we could use to get this done,” Ebell said.

Further updates possible in coming days...