An omnibus package of more than 150 public lands, water and resources bills will not come up during this week's lame-duck session, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said today, citing a lack of time to defeat one senator's delaying tactics.
The legislation will be reintroduced in January as the "first or second" action taken by the new Congress, Reid vowed. The bill will be considered under "Rule 14," he added, meaning it will be immediately placed on the Senate calendar and can be brought to the floor at any time without the need to go through the committee process.
"I think that serves everyone's interest," Reid said.
Reid had said before Congress adjourned for the elections that the Senate would take up the package during the lame duck. But today he announced that he and Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah) decided they were better off waiting to act until Congress returns next year because they would have more votes then. He also noted delaying tactics that would be used against the bill if they brought it up now.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) threatened to hold up the package if it comes to the floor, claiming the legislation would increase government spending and curtail energy development.
"We've been told if we brought it up today that there would be a requirement to read that bill," Reid said. "It would take more than 24 hours to do that."
Bennett does not sit on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which created the bill, but Reid's office said he and Bennett have been working together on the omnibus. A Reid spokesman indicated Bennett had approached the majority leader on the issue and directed questions to Bennett.
Bennett's office did not respond to inquiries by deadline. At least four measures in the package directly affect Utah. All four are bills that would transfer relatively small amounts of land in the state to or from the federal government.
In another sign of the pair's working relationship on public resource issues, Reid recently mentioned Bennett as a possible Interior secretary. He made the suggestion on CNN's "Late Edition" on Nov. 9, while discussing which Republicans might make good bipartisan additions to an Obama Cabinet. "There's other senators, I think -- Bennett from Utah, what a fine man," he said. "He could be a great secretary of the Interior or do other good things."
A bipartisan group of 20 senators, not including Bennett, wrote to Reid last week encouraging him to bring the omnibus bill up during the lame duck.
Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingman (D-N.M.) has long said there would be the 60 votes needed to override Coburn's hold. But with lawmakers focused on efforts to address the country's economic woes, time ran short.
The omnibus combines 53 bills the Energy Committee approved by unanimous voice vote last month with a 96-bill package from the committee that was already awaiting consideration on the floor. Included in the package are 15 different proposals that would designate nearly 2 million acres of public lands as wilderness in California, Colorado, Idaho, Michigan, New Mexico, Oregon, Virginia and West Virginia.
The bill also contains dozens of proposals authorizing new studies for national park units, heritage areas and wild and scenic rivers. While supportive of the designations, the Bush administration has long held that Congress should hold off on new studies until the Interior Department completes its backlog of studies already authorized.
One of the most controversial measures in the package would allow construction of a road through Alaska's Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. The bill would authorize a land swap that would permit a road connecting the villages of King Cove and Cold Bay in exchange for additional wilderness for the refuge. The omnibus also includes a proposal to codify the 26-million-acre National Landscape Conservation System.
Groups with interests in particular bills expressed disappointment over the delay but confidence that it would pass next year. House Natural Resources Chairman Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) has said that if the Senate does not pass the resources bills during the lame duck, Congress will take them up again next year, perhaps packaging them in another omnibus "right off the bat."
Mike Matz, executive director of the Campaign for America's Wilderness, said lawmakers need to finish next year what they started. "Congress must not allow the great collaboration and consensus on this beneficial package to go for naught," he said in a statement.
