Senate Democrats head toward pivotal vote with climate agenda intact - POLITICO

Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden announced Saturday that his panel’s energy provisions cleared Senate budget rules.

Democrats have survived the vetting of the Medicare portions of their prescription drug reform plan, but lost ground on a separate pillar that penalizes drug companies for raising prices on individuals with private health insurance, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Saturday.

Schumer, however, underscored the upside: The Senate’s nonpartisan rules referee, who decides which provisions are eligible for sidestepping a GOP filibuster under the chamber’s strict rules, signed off on Medicare-related drug price negotiation.

While the loss of their proposed prescription drug price benefits for the millions of Americans who get health insurance through private-sector employers stings hard, Democrats also got some good news overnight on their climate change plan — the Senate’s rules arbiter signed off on that the bill’s energy provisions, including electric vehicle tax credits and a bonus tax credit to encourage clean energy developers to pay the prevailing wage.

Republicans argued that the savings yielded by the mandate involving the private insurance market, in particular, could be considered a budget side effect of the policy rather than its main purpose, which would break Senate budget rules.

Some budget experts had surmised that certain conditions placed on the electric vehicle tax credits, including restrictions on where car battery materials must be sourced, ran afoul of the budget rules guiding the process that Democrats are using to pass their bill with a simple majority and evade a filibuster.

In addition to the electric vehicle provisions, Democrats also preserved another element of the bill’s climate section: a proposed fee on oil and gas companies that exceed a certain level of methane emissions