House compromises on clean energy legislation may not ‘fully satisfy’ some Senate Democrats.

Last week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee struck a compromise on clean energy legislation that weakened areas of the bill in order to gain wider support. While the version of the bill being considered in the House is still worth supporting, Roll Call reports today that the compromises made in the House may not be enough for some Senate Democrats:

Another senior aide said Waxman’s “pragmatic approach … will be appreciated in the Senate” but cautioned that the deal is unlikely to fully satisfy Senate moderates who are looking to temper the bill even more.

“Rick Boucher does not equal Evan Bayh does not equal Debbie Stabenow,” the senior Senate Democratic aide said of the Democratic Senators from Indiana and Michigan, respectively. Bayh and Stabenow have expressed reservations about cap-and-trade provisions, which would cap emissions and allow industries to trade for pollution permits.

“There are a substantial number of moderate Democrats who are uneasy at best,” the knowledgeable Senate Democratic aide noted.

In his column today, Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman endorses the current House compromise, writing that “the legislation now on the table isn’t the bill we’d ideally want, but it’s the bill we can get — and it’s vastly better than no bill at all.” Climate Progress’s Joe Romm wrote yesterday that passing the House bill would be “a stunning legislative achievement” that would “require the United States to eliminate virtually all greenhouse gas emissions in four decades.”