"This may be a long-term blow to the Republican Leadership's iron-fisted style. Their biggest mistake was shutting Democrats and even most of their own party out of the Conference Committee, and letting a handful of members write the bill. You can't build the kind of support you need to get something this big across the Senate floor that way. Now they may have sunk one of the President's biggest policy priorities.

"The question now is whether handing out another round of pork in appropriations bills will sway enough votes in the next couple of days to patch the hole in the bottom of the President's energy boat.

"There were some real profiles in courage in this vote. Six Republicans stood up to the White House and their own leadership. Some Democrats, like Senator Durbin weren't willing to abandon everything they've said on energy for the past three years just to satisfy a home state appetite for big ethanol subsidies. Unfortunately, Senators Daschle and Harkin and other farm state Democrats were willing to take the bait.

"This bill is not a new energy policy -- it's the same old energy policy that Nixon, Carter and the first President Bush tried: throw billions in subsidies at oil, gas, coal and utility companies and hope for the best. And because we do nothing serious about making our economy more energy-efficient and developing renewable technologies, energy consumption keeps outstripping our resources. Some President down the line will have to go through the whole sorry act again.

"The only winners in this bill would have been companies like Vice President Cheney's Halliburton, and Bechtel. Those two companies alone raided the treasury for up to $1.6 billion in oil drilling and nuclear 'demonstration' projects - on top of the billions they are making in Iraq."