DVT points to this Investor's Business Daily report headlined "Efforts to revive Senate energy legislation fall short." Excerpt:
In an odd twist earlier this week, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., sought to add an amendment to an unrelated Internet tax moratorium bill that would enact popular ethanol provisions of the energy bill that stalled out in the Senate last fall.
(Emphasis added.) As DVT notes, Daschle missed the one opportunity to get these ethanol provisions passed last fall, and instead of rounding up the last couple of votes needed, he went out to sign copies of his book.
The above photo was taken during a book signing in New York on November 10, 2003. By the way, Daschle is at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York tonight receiving an award for blocking tort reform.
It's worthwhile to flash back to a letter Tom Daschle wrote to the Wall Street Journal last October regarding ethanol. Excerpt from the letter:
You also suggest that I would abandon my opposition to drilling in the wildlife refuge in order to advance the energy bill's ethanol provision, which is supported by more than two-thirds of the Senate and President Bush. I never will make that trade, and I am confident that the ethanol provision will become law this Congress, either in the energy bill or on its own merit."
(Emphasis added.) So far, Daschle's confidence seems to have been misplaced. Perhaps it is because of this misplaced confidence that Daschle didn't bother to get the number of votes when the energy bill came within an eyelash of passing last fall, and instead went out and signed some books.
Isn't it interesting, too, that even though the ANWR provision was dropped from the energy bill, Daschle still didn't wholeheartedly lobby for its passage? Now, Tom Daschle is blaming the failure of the bill on the MBTE provisions, and those provisions have been taken out too. Still, we can't seem to get these ethanol provisions into law. It leads one to ask what kind of clout Tom Daschle supposedly has, when he can't or won't get ethanol passed into law.
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