Instead of finding commonsense solutions, the Republicans are talking about things that have nothing to do with middle-income taxes — like the Keystone pipeline, rolling back regulations to keep our air safe and our water clean and pure. These tactics are stalling — more evidence the Republicans don’t want to extend this tax cut. They talk about extending it but simply are unwilling to do anything to make it a reality.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) agreed. “So we say to Speaker Boehner, instruct your conferees to drop the issue of Boiler MACT.”

The agreement resolved the last stalemate in a year of bitter congressional fighting that earned lawmakers their lowest approval ratings in recent memory.

In exchange for supporting the 60-day patch, Republicans secured minor face-saving concessions from Senate leaders, who had already passed a two-month deal on an overwhelming vote of 89 to 10. Senate leaders had balked at the House’s demand to restart talks over the holidays on a full-year extension of the tax cut.

The Senate agreed to make a technical change to the payroll tax reporting requirements, designed to lessen the burden on small businesses of implementing the two-month deal.

And Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) promised he would appoint a conference committee to take up negotiations after New Year’s Day on ways to pay for a full-year tax cut.

Both chambers will pass the plan by unanimous consent so long as no member shows up to voice opposition in person, which lets the deal pass even though most members have gone home. There was no opposition to the deal in the Senate Friday morning. The two-month extension gives House and Senate leaders time to negotiate for a yearlong extension after the holiday recess. “I am grateful that the voices of reason have prevailed,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said in a statement.

But so far, a few House freshmen have threatened to stop the deal. Freshman Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) said he was “not yet sure” if he would protest the deal, and Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) told CNN’s John King Thursday night, “I’m not so sure I’m not going to do that,” when asked if he’d drive to Washington, D.C. to stop the deal.

Boehner acknowledged the pressure he has felt, telling reporters Thursday that “I talked to enough members over the last 24 hours who say we don’t like the two-month extension and if you can get this fixed, why not do the right thing for the American people even if it’s not exactly what we want.”

Boehner received pressure from his own party — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called on the House to pass the two month extension yesterday — as well as the public. After the White House asked people to say what $40 — the average amount an American worker would lose per paycheck without the extension — would mean to them, thousands of people responded on Twitter using the #40dollars hashtag.

In a letter sent to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton earlier this month, Reid expressed concerns about the environmental impact of the project. The Washington Post reported on the October 5th correspondence:

“The proponents of this pipeline would be wiser to invest instead in job-creating clean energy projects, like renewable power, energy efficiency or advanced vehicles and fuels that would employ thousands of people in the United States rather than increasing our dependency on unsustainable supplies of dirty and polluting oil that could easily be exported,” Reid wrote.

Reid has been a strong supporter of clean energy and has maintained that support during a time of severe Congressional backlash against government incentives for the sector. But this is the first time he has publicly given his opinions on the Keystone XL Pipeline — a project that has united environmental activists and split the Democratic party.

Some Congressional Democrats have remained silent on the issue, waiting for the State Department to make a decision. Others have thrown their support behind the pipeline, which they say will create jobs and boost tax revenues.

Meanwhile, the environmental community is putting heavy pressure on the Obama Administration to delay or abandon Keystone XL, calling it “game over for the climate.” They’re also highlighting the immense conflicts of interest within the State Department and the proposed builder, TransCanada — pointing out that the agency outsourced the environmental review of the project to a TransCanada contractor.

Many see this as the ultimate test of the Obama Administration’s commitment to combating climate change. Harry Reid, one of the most powerful Democrats in Washington, appears to see it that way too.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) weighed in for the first time on Oct. 5 in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton questioning the 1,700-mile project that would stretch from Canada to the Gulf Coast:

“The proponents of this pipeline would be wiser to invest instead in job-creating clean energy projects, like renewable power, energy efficiency or advanced vehicles and fuels that would employ thousands of people in the United States rather than increasing our dependency on unsustainable supplies of dirty and polluting oil that could easily be exported,” Reid wrote.

But after the bankruptcy of Solyndra — a solar energy company — Stephen Brown, vice president of federal government affairs for oil refiner Tesoro, asked why Reid would even focus on renewable energy instead of oil. “It will come as a shock to the tens of thousands of professional skilled American refinery workers, many of whom are union members, that their jobs do not have the same cachet as politically correct ‘green jobs’ in Solyndra-like endeavors,” Brown said.

In contrast to Reid’s letter, 22 House Democrats sent a letter to Obama asking him to support the Keystone XL project because of the jobs it could create:

[T]he Keystone XL Pipeline will inject $20 billion of private sector investment into the American economy, create 20,000 direct jobs, spur the creation of 118,000 spin-off jobs, payout $5 billion in taxes to local counties over the project’s lifetime, bolster America’s energy security and strengthen our national security. [...] We are confident that the Department of State’s review process and the project operator’s commitment to employing well-trained union workers will yield the most appropriately routed, safest and environmentally sound pipeline in our nation.

Out of the entire House Democratic Caucus, 22 members is hardly a majority, and most who signed onto the letter are moderate Blue Dog Democrats. And the State Department estimates that the pipeline will create fewer jobs than TransCanada has estimated, with many being temporary positions. The environmental risks for a pipeline crossing the United States and Canada also could be much higher than previous assumed, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Previously, former Vice President Al Gore has pushed for Obama to block the pipeline, and Gov. Dave Heineman (R-NE) has said he opposes the pipeline because of the risk it would pose to one of his state’s major water supplies.

Harry Reid, reflecting on the Senate GOP minority’s filibuster of a majority-backed American Jobs Act, offered a critique that I believe is new for him:

“Republicans think that if the economy improves, it might help President Obama,” Mr. Reid said. “So they root for the economy to fail and oppose every effort to improve it.”

I think Rick Perry’s infamous threats against Ben Bernanke really broke the seal on this. Perry said it would be treasonous for the Fed to enact new monetary stimulus to help Barack Obama. But how would monetary stimulus help Barack Obama? Well, it would help Obama if it helped the economy, but not otherwise. So it would be treasonous for Bernanke to help the economy because doing so would indirectly help Obama.

Most politicians have better message discipline than that, and most human beings have more advanced psychological mechanisms at their disposal for resolving cognitive dissonance. So I doubt that the GOP is sitting around in their caucus meetings chuckling about their “recession —> Obama electoral defeat” plan. At the same time, people have a way of aligning their thinking with their interests. So the GOP has succeeded in hurting the economy with premature fiscal austerity, hurting the economy with the debt ceiling panic, hurting the economy with letters opposing monetary stimulus, and now will of course also oppose efforts at expansionary fiscal policy. And why not? Less growth really is better for them.

But I also say, Mr. President, in its present form, I’m going to have some difficulty bringing this bill to the floor. It contains provisions relating to the detention of terrorism suspects that in the words of national security adviser John Brennan would be, and I quote, “disastrous. It would tie the hands of our counterterrorism professionals by eliminating tools and authorities that have been absolutely essential to their success.”

To show you how extremely important it is that we do something about these provisions in this bill that are just wrong, both the Judiciary Committee in the Senate and the Intelligence Committee in the Senate have asked for hearings on this provision in this bill.

Watch the video:

In a September speech, Brennan, a deputy national security adviser, decried any “rigid, inflexible approach” to terrorism that would stop the Obama administration from taking its “practical, flexible, results-driven approach that maximizes our intelligence collection and preserves our ability to prosecute dangerous individuals.”

A day after his floor comments, Reid sent a letter the Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) and Ranking Member John McCain (R-AZ) informing them that he didn’t intend to bring the National Defense Authorization Act to the floor until it was stripped of the detention provisions. In the letter, Reid objected to:

[T]he authorization of indefinite detention in section 1031, the requirement for mandatory military custody of terrorism suspects in Section 1032, and the stringent restrictions on transfer of detainees in Section 1033. [...]

I strongly believe that we must maintain the capability and flexibility to effectively apply the full range of tools at our disposal to combat terrorism. This includes the use of our criminal justice system, which has accumulated an impressive record of success in bringing terrorists to justice.

In his floor speech, Reid cited a compromise over last year’s National Defense Authorization Act, which originally included a repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy on gays in the military. Republicans filibustered the authorization and Democrats relented, taking the DADT repeal out of the bill and agreeing to put it forward later as a separate vote. Reid asked that McCain take the same approach to the terrorism detention provisions in this year’s authorization.

In an interview with Climate Progress, Senator Reid (D-NV) lamented the breakdown of bi-partisan support for renewable energy, saying many conservative members of Congress were “making a concerted effort to thwart development” of clean energy.

When asked whether Congress would be able to pass even the most basic support mechanisms for renewable energy like the PTC, Reid answered: “I’m hopeful, but not confident we can get them passed.”

The PTC, which provides wind project owners 2.1 cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity produced, is a fundamental incentive for the industry. However, unlike permanent credits embedded in the tax code for oil and gas producers, the PTC is only extended every couple of years. That creates immense uncertainty in the sector in the lead-up to the expiration.

If the PTC expires, the wind industry would see a massive decline in installations, effectively choking one of the fastest-growing energy sectors in the country. During previous lapses in the tax credit, national installations fell by between 70% and 90%.

The PTC is set to expire at the end of 2012. Because it can take years to plan large wind farms, many projects are delayed or abandoned if a developer is unsure about completing the facility in time to qualify for tax credits.

Since 2009, wind developers have been able to take an investment tax credit worth 30% of a project’s cost or an equivalent 30% cash grant through the Treasury, rather than the PTC. The Treasury Grant Program has been immensely helpful to the wind industry at a time when tax equity investors (financial institutions that owe enough in taxes to acquire the credits and help fund projects) have been limited.

After a drop-off in installations in 2009 because of the financial crisis and stiff competition with cheap natural gas, the industry is rebounding. In the first half of 2011, developers doubled the amount of capacity that they put online in the first half of 2010.

But with the Treasury grant program set to expire in January and the PTC only around for another year, the wind industry is approaching the edge of a cliff.

Other industries that rely on the PTC like geothermal, biomass and hydro won’t face expiration until the end of 2013. But they too could be in a similar situation if no extension is in place before then.

It’s an all-too-common story for a sector that must deal with on-again, off-again support.

Reid said earlier this summer that any jobs package pushed by Democrats would focus heavily on clean energy jobs. And in his speeches at last week’s National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas, he was bullish about the long-term prospects for renewable energy in the U.S.

But off the stage, Reid was a lot more realistic about the fight within Congress over industry support.

“I would like to say we’re off and running and going to do all these great things. We’re going to try to do them. And I want to do them. But anything that we’re being asked to do is going to be hard to do.”

And in the last couple of years, a number of CSP developers have partnered with natural gas and coal operators to create hybrid solar/fossil plants in an effort to lower the installed cost of solar and make fossil generation more efficient.

It was only a matter of time before we saw the hybrid geothermal-solar plant.

A group of business and policy leaders were in Las Vegas at the National Clean Energy Summit this morning announcing the groundbreaking of the world’s first solar-geothermal power plant – a 24-MW facility that will combine 80,000 polycrystalline PV modules with traditional hydrothermal technology.

One of the largest power plant developers in the world, Enel, is building the project. The company decided to go with PV because of the cost competitiveness of the technology. But Enel is also in the early stages of developing a similar hybrid Concentrating Solar Power-Geothermal “test plant” in the same location.

“All these things are going to be necessary as we move into renewables,” said Energy Secretary Steven Chu, speaking at the press conference. “This is an incredible new technology that can be used across the country.”

Secretary Chu was joined by Nevada Senator Harry Reid, Center for American Progress CEO John Podesta, Enel Green Power’s Francesco Venturini, and Bombard Renewable Energy’s Chris Brooks.

The speakers focused heavily on the jobs issue – explaining the importance of consistent federal policy in helping grow jobs in this emerging sector. At the peak of construction, this solar-geothermal plant will create 250 jobs.

“We have the opportunity to lead the world in this market,” explained Secretary Chu.

Senator Reid decried the continued uncertainty on the federal level, explaining that Democrats will make an increased push for clean energy in the fall.

“This is a debate we can win publicly. This is an energy revolution that other countries have embraced with arms wide open,” said Reid.

The National Clean Energy Summit will be streaming speeches and roundtables on clean energy policy and technologies. Check out the NCES 4.0 website to see this morning’s speeches from Secretary Chu, Senator Reid, Vice President Biden and more. We’ll be speaking to a number of leaders at the summit, so look out for more interviews.

Reid, Chu and Biden Kick Off the Day, Climate Progress Will Have Exclusive Interterviews

Politico opens its Morning Energy briefing:

TODAY’S MAIN EVENT: The big happening in energy this week is the fourth annual Clean Energy Summit today in Las Vegas, where Vice President Joe Biden, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval, California Gov. Jerry Brown and Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire are headlining.

Senate majority leader Harry Reid released highlights from his opening remarks:

“Advanced energy technology — from new vehicles and smarter appliances to more efficient electric grids and cleaner power plants — have the power to change the way we live for the better. It offers us a pathway to a more secure and independent America — one that isn’t dependent on oil from unstable regions of the world but rather embraces the American spirit of innovation. It offers manufacturing and construction workers who have struggled to find jobs during these tough economic times a chance to get back to work building solar panels, transmission grids and high-speed trains.

“This summit gives each of us a glimpse of our clean energy future. It will also help us see why we need to build on our clean energy achievements, not surrender our leadership to other countries who have also made clean energy a top priority.”

Climate Progress clean energy reporter Stephen Lacey is on the scene, and he will have exclusive interviews with many of the speakers, which we will post today and  tomorrow.

Details on the event are here.

Despite getting hung up in Washington due to Hurricane Irene, we finally made it to Las Vegas for the fourth National Clean Energy Summit, a gathering of business and policy leaders to talk about the future of renewable energy, efficiency, transportation, and the intelligent grid.

We’ve got a great line-up of speakers tomorrow: Vice President Joe Biden; Energy Secretary Steven Chu; Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus; the Governors of California, Nevada and Washington; Federal Energy Regulatory Chairman John Wellinghoff; Nevada Senator Harry Reid; Center for American Progress President John Podesta, and many more.

Be sure to check out the live streaming of the event on Tuesday from 9 am to 5 pm. We’ll have roundtable discussions, speeches, and Q&A on all things clean energy.

This fall is a critical time for the future of renewable energy. As Congress looks to make deep cuts in spending on energy, we’ll be looking at how that will shape the sector over the coming years. Tune in to hear from top decision makers on how the policy and business environment may unfold.

Frustrated by the GOP’s refusal to come to the negotiating table with open minds, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), who is tasked with appointing three members to the committee, rhetorically raised the question of not appointing anyone to the committee. While stopping short of issuing a threat, in an interview with Politico, Reid suggested these pre-conditions would make the negotiating process futile, and thus perhaps not worth engaging in:

Reid is already upset that Republican leaders have declared that they will not appoint anyone to the joint committee who backs any tax hike, a virtual replay of the spending cuts vs. new tax revenues fight that consumed Washington for the past several months. “So what does that leave the committee to do?” Reid said. “Should Pelosi and I just not appoint and walk away?”

Democrats already conceded to a deal with zero revenue increases in the initial debt ceiling agreement, and doing so again would imperil the committee’s ability to reduce the deficit. Thus, progressives are calling on Democrats not to accept any deal that doesn’t include at least some revenue increases. By insisting on appointing lawmakers with pre-conditions, Republicans are effectively dooming the entire process — which was intended to show that bipartisan cooperation is still possible in Washington — before it even gets under way.

Much of the media coverage of the shutdown has framed it as simply another example of “Capitol Hill gridlock,” or has focused on cuts to rural airports that the House GOP included in the bill. But the crux of the matter is that House Republicans refused to reauthorize the FAA without the inclusion of a union-busting provision that would make it harder for workers at airlines and railways to organize. The cuts to rural airports — as House Transportation Committee Chairman John Mica (R-FL) freely admitted — were simply meant to stick it to Democratic senators (as they’re concentrated in states those senators represent).

The anti-union provision upon which the GOP is insisting has been desperately sought by big airlines, including Delta. Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) correctly summed up the story during an interview yesterday with NPR:

“The House has tried to make this a battle over essential air service,” he says. “It’s not a battle over essential air service. It’s a battle over Delta Airlines, who refuses to allow votes under the new rules that have been passed by the NLRB [National Labor Relations Board].”

The issue, Reid says, is Delta’s “non-union” stance. The bill to fund the FAA, as crafted by House Republicans, includes language that sets new rules for aviation workers’ votes on labor representation.

Reid isn’t quite right on the details, as the issue revolves around a rule crafted by the National Mediation Board, which oversees airlines and railroads, not the National Labor Relations Board. But his larger point is correct: the GOP is insisting on legislative union-busting and is willing to shut down the FAA in order to get its way.

Even some Republicans see through this charade, with Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) saying “it’s not honorable” for the House GOP to attach extraneous policy riders to the FAA bill. The revenue that the government will lose over the next month dwarfs the cuts to rural airport subsidies that the House included in its bill.

The White House had already signed onto Reid’s conservative plan, making it the best hope of averting a crisis since Boehner walked out of negotiations Friday. “This is an offer that Republicans can’t refuse,” said Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY).

Apparently not. The Reid plan “makes no changes to the biggest drivers of our deficit and our debt and that would be entitlement programs,” Boehner said at a late afternoon press conference, flanked by other GOP leaders. This demand seemed to be a brazen moving of the goal posts, as entitlement cuts never appeared to be red-line demand for Republicans for raising the debt ceiling.

Boehner put forward his own debt plan this afternoon, which presumably would address his newly discovered demand. But Boehner’s office told staff members of his own caucus that his plan wouldn’t touch Social Security, Medicare, or the Affordable Care Act. RedState blogger Erik Erickson — who has been fielding calls for “absolution” from GOP members all day — obtained “bullet points from one of the individuals who got briefed at the staff level on John Boehner’s proposal” that make this very clear:

In a way, this makes sense, as the Boehner and Reid plans have nearly identical methods for making entitlement reforms — a 12 member committee to make deficit reduction proposals. From a fact sheet on Reid’s plan:

Establishes Joint Congressional Committee to Find Future Savings. In addition to $2.7 trillion in concrete savings, the Senate package will establish a joint, bipartisan committee, made up of 12 members, to present options for future deficit reduction.

From a fact sheet on Boehner’s plan:

The framework creates a Joint Committee of Congress that is required to report legislation – by November 23, 2011 – that would produce a proposal to reduce the deficit by at least $1.8 trillion over 10 years. The committee would be made up of 12 members, three each appointed by the Speaker, House Minority Leader, Senator Majority leader and Senate Minority Leader.

It’s beyond troubling when, just eight days from a potential default, the Speaker of the House is rejecting plans he apparently can’t accurately characterize based on demands that didn’t exist just days earlier.

REID: Our differences are no longer over how much savings we get under government spending. The only thing holding up an agreement is ideology. […]

I’m sorry to say, Mr. President, that my friend, the Speaker, and the Republican leadership have drawn a line in the sand. … the two main issues that are holding this matter up are the choice of women, reproductive rights, and clean air. These matters have no place on a budget bill, Mr. President. This is a bill to keep the government running with dollars. They want to roll back the Clean Air Act. So if this government shuts down – and it looks like it’s headed in that direction – it’s going to be based on my friends in the House of Representatives, the leadership over there, focusing on ideological matters that have nothing to do with funding this government.

It was this same insistence on unrelated policy riders by Republicans that prompted the last government shutdown in 1995. A look back:

“Gingrich and Dole are offering the funding and higher-debt bills but have loaded them with ‘riders’ such as the Medicare bill that the president won’t accept and with other items such as limits on appeals by death-row inmates. [Denver Post, 11/15/95]

“One of the largest spending bills, for the Commerce, Justice and State Departments, is still being negotiated because it has riders on social issues like school prayer. The spending bill for the District of Columbia has been bogged down over a provision to bar Federal money to pay for abortions in the District and would prohibit public hospitals and clinics from offering abortion services.” [New York Times, 11/29/95]

“Congress has been unable to send any bill to the president because of the excessive number of anti-environmental riders.” [U.S. Newswire, 12/8/95]

The funding bill passed by the Republican-controlled House contains more than 80 unrelated policy riders on issues, from abortion to net neutrality to environmental regulations. You can check them out here.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) has urged his party to drop the policy riders so that a government shutdown can be avoided. Yesterday, Coburn said “And my recommendation to my friends in the House is, you know, it’s highly unlikely many riders are going to get passed…so why don’t you take the spending [cuts] and let’s get on to the budget.”

There is no debate, however, that the 111th Congress passed a historic volume of substantial legislation, whatever one might think about the merits of these achievements. Historian Alan Brinkley told Bloomberg yesterday that “[t]his is probably the most productive session of Congress since at least the ’60s,” for an article outlining the historic achievements of this session:

For the first time since President Theodore Roosevelt began the quest for a national health-care system more than 100 years ago, the Democrat-led House and Senate took the biggest step toward achieving that goal by giving 32 million Americans access to insurance. Congress rewrote the rules for Wall Street in the most comprehensive way since the Great Depression. It spent more than $1.67 trillion to revive an economy on the verge of a depression, including tax cuts for most Americans, jobs for more than 3 million, construction of roads and bridges and investment in alternative energy; ended an almost two-decade ban against openly gay men and women serving in the military, and today ratified a nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia.

In addition to these headline achievements, the 111th Congress also:

– Passed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, making it easier for women and other minorities to file equal-pay discrimination lawsuits.

– Overhauled the federal student loan system, eliminating billions of dollars of waste being paid to for-profit loan companies while expanding access to loans, especially for low-income students.

– Confirmed two Supreme Court nominees.

– Passed legislation to help Sept. 11 first responders deal with ongoing health problems.

– Expanded the Children’s Health Insurance Program to include an additional 4 million children and pregnant women, after the Bush administration denied funding increases for years.

– Passed child nutrition legislation, which expands the federal school lunch program and improves the quality of the meals.

– Enacted food safety legislation, which intends to improve safety measures and prevent food-borne illnesses.

– Approved a settlement for black and Native American farmers that were subject to discrimination by the USDA.

– Passed legislation strengthening the prosecution of hate crimes.

– Passed pro-consumer legislation further regulating abusive practices of credit card companies.

Brinkley also noted these achievements are “all the more impressive given how polarized the Congress has been.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has famously said that “the single most important thing” his party wanted to achieve was a one-term Obama presidency, and congressional Republicans used an unprecedented number of filibusters and filibuster threats; they employed various procedural holds and other tricks to delay or block legislation, and blocked historically high numbers of judicial appointments and appointments to the executive branch. That these legislative achievements occurred in the face of epic Republican obstruction makes them all the more noteworthy.

REID: I’m going to file cloture tonight on the DREAM Act, we’re going to have a vote on that Saturday morning fairly early. We’re going to have a cloture vote tonight on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell– oh, not a cloture vote, I’m going to file cloture on it tonight. Those will be sequenced for Saturday, whenever we get to them. Following that, I was told by a number of Republican Senators that they need 6 or 7 days to offer amendment on the START treaty.

Watch it:

Reid appears to be following the advise of Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), who earlier today suggested that the Senate vote on DADT before moving back START. “I believe instead of going back to the START treaty, we should go to the independent stand-alone repeal of don’t ask don’t tell Saturday night,” Lieberman said. “We can get it done by Monday, maybe Tuesday at the latest, and then go back to the START treaty.”

The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent argued that this is the best case scenario for repealing the policy since “[i]f Reid waits until New START is done before holding the vote on DADT, Senators could start going home once the treaty is resolved, dooming DADT repeal.” “By contrast, if the DADT repeal vote is done first, no Senator will leave Washington before START is resolved. So doing DADT repeal first doesn’t imperil START.”