WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats on Thursday blocked action on a comprehensive energy bill that had drawn broad bipartisan support after lawmakers failed to agree on including a $600 million amendment to address the crisis over lead-tainted water in Flint, Michigan.
Senators voted twice to end debate on the energy bill, first falling 10 votes short of the 60-vote threshold needed to bring the item to a conclusion, and then falling six votes short. Absent their Flint aid amendment, 38 Democrats, including one of the bill's chief authors, Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, voted against moving forward on the first vote, and 39 Democrats voted no on the second vote.
Thursday's votes will delay, but not derail, the legislation. Immediately after, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, said that its authors would work through the weekend to find a path forward on the energy bill and the Flint aid amendment.
"Hopefully we'll be able to salvage this important bipartisan legislation in the next few days," he said.
The bill, written by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, the chairwoman of the Energy Committee, with Cantwell, the committee's ranking Democrat, was the first major energy legislation to come to the Senate floor in nearly a decade. The measure would modernize the nation's power grid, expand production of renewable energy, accelerate exports of natural gas and improve the government's response to cybersecurity threats.
The senators managed to draft a bill that would substantially reshape energy policy with support from a majority in both parties, and they accomplished this in an election year.
But the roiling scandal of lead-tainted water in Flint brought the measure down, at least temporarily.
The energy bill reached the Senate floor with bipartisan momentum. But as the crisis in Flint worsened, Democrats saw it as an opportunity to demand federal aid for its victims.
"I ask my colleagues in the Senate to look very hard at what has happened here and to help us address this issue," said Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich. "This is a public health emergency on a massive scale. It is unprecedented. I don't know of any other American city where families in the entire city can't drink the water, can't cook with the water, can't bathe with the water."
Senate Republicans initially refused to allow a floor vote on the aid package unless it included spending cuts elsewhere in the budget to pay for it.
Just before Thursday's vote, Murkowski asked the Senate for unanimous consent to vote on several amendments related to Flint aid, including Stabenow's amendment, but Stabenow objected.
Murkowski, Cantwell and Stabenow worked for days on compromise language that would satisfy Senate Republican leaders as well as Michiganders, including cutting the amount of aid.
Still, Murkowski expressed hope that a breakthrough could be in sight should the Flint amendment return to the floor.
"We have made headway on federal assistance, headway on programs that could be used," she said.